


Sumia and Robin: Hitting the Books

by AnPresonPeepul



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Canon Compliant, Detectives, F/M, I'm not afraid of your canon ships, Kidnapping, Mystery, Pie, Romantic Comedy, Sexism, Tension, Tension resolved with Pie, buddy cop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnPresonPeepul/pseuds/AnPresonPeepul
Summary: Once is chance. Twice, a coincidence. Four times over? Then you’ve got the attention of Ylisse’s finest. He was no dashing knight, and she, no magical princess. Yet when Robin is lumped together with Sumia to investigate a case of disappearing young girls, they find themselves unlikely allies chasing down a mysterious caper, reaching an understanding of each other and growing closer in the process.
Relationships: My Unit | Reflet | Robin/Sumia
Comments: 19
Kudos: 49





	1. Ylisse's Finest

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I thought up over the weekend, then, because I put most of my stories on hold and I was bored, I decided to write this up over the holidays.
> 
> I could've finished Portal 2, but I wanted to be productive.

On one hand, Robin should have known better.

Walking through the halls, staring down into the new plans he'd written out the night before, he was bound to crash into someone. It was just that he needed to go over them one more time, just to make sure that these plans would be perfect. The patrol patterns he'd created last time were good, but there were always ways he could improve, just as he had done the last ten times this month.

Which was why when he found himself on the floor, blueberry guts splattered over his face, he was a little upset.

His hand reached out, and he found something firm and smooth beneath his grasp. Sturdy biceps, if he guessed correctly, pulsing under his palm.

"Chrom, is that you?" was the first thing out of his mouth.

"Chrom, I'm so sorry!" came from the other person.

...

What? If that wasn't Chrom, then who was it?

As the blueberry filling fell from his eyes, all became clear. Sitting in front of him was not Chrom, but a disheveled Sumia, her hair splayed out over the floor. Her eyes widened, and as her cheeks became dusted with red, embarrassment crept up his own.

"Oh, it's you," he said.

"It's you!" she said at the same time.

She jumped to her feet, and Robin noticed the empty pie pan in her hands. He glanced down at himself, and when he looked over the blueberry filling smeared over his face, his coat, and, to his irritation, his notes, he scowled. Of course, of all the people he could have bumped into, it had to be the baker.

"I-I'm sorry about your notes," she stammered out as he pushed himself back to his feet, wiping the blueberry goo off his coat.

"It's fine," he said. "I memorized the whole thing anyway. I suppose I should apologize for your pie."

"Oh, there's no need for that either. I had another one prepared." To his surprise, she did, in fact, have another pie prepared, and she pulled it out from somewhere behind her. "I have to be prepared for this sort of thing. You know, being me."

"Yes, yes. I guess so. You just didn't strike me as the type."

"Oh."

They let the silence stew for a bit. An awkward glance, a shuffling foot.

Finally, Robin cleared his throat. "Well, I better get going. Things won't manage themselves."

"Yeah," Sumia said.

He turned to his left, to the hall leading to the Exalt's throne room. Sumia did the same. They exchanged another look, and Robin narrowed his eyes.

"This is where I'm going," Robin said.

Sumia shrank back a little. "Can't I go down here too? I mean, I know whatever it is you've got to do is important, but these pies won't deliver themselves either."

Robin's mouth twisted in a grimace. He didn't say anything, though, and instead, he turned back to the hall and began walking. Behind him, he heard Sumia start as well, her unsteady footsteps more akin to stumbling than walking.

They walked together in silence. Even during the Plegian War not even one and a half years ago, Sumia and Robin never had much to talk about. In fact, during the war, Sumia had seemed intent on avoiding him at all costs. That it didn't change, even seventeen months later, so they just let the distance between them be, their footsteps echoing in the hall doing a good enough job of filling it in.

At last, the Exalt's doors appeared on the right, two giant arcing pieces of carved wood decorated with elaborate gold patterns. Standing below the towering doors, Robin took a moment to gather himself. He knew the Exalt to be a friendly man, having fought with him in the long war against Plegia. He wasn't nervous. He just needed to dazzle him with these new plans of his, plans that would make the kingdom a safer place, something that Chrom had been pushing a lot as of late.

His hand grabbed the doorknob on the left. A smaller hand grabbed the one on the right. Robin glanced up, and for the second time today, found Sumia mirroring him.

"What sort of business could you have here?" he asked.

"N-none of your business!" Sumia said, and as she stepped away, she clutched the pie in her hands closer to her breast.

Robin's eyes flicked down to it briefly. When he looked back up, she turned bright red, a strange thing, but something that he decided not to dwell on. He tore his gaze away from hers, and back to the door. He took one last breath, and he pushed through and stepped inside, head high.

* * *

Sumia should have known better.

She and Robin had never got on. Chrom trusted Robin greatly, that much she knew. It just didn't make much sense to her, though. If her books were anything to go by, the close bonds he shared with Chrom was something forged by a life-long friendship. Robin had just shown up one day and instantly gained the trust of the Exalt, so she felt that she could be excused if she thought that just seemed a little fishy to her.

Maybe Robin was using some Grimleal mind-magic to make Chrom trust him? Some of the more... saucy books she had in her library claimed that the Grimleal could warp the minds of their victims, and while such claims usually seemed completely unrealistic, this might just be an exception.

On the other hand, she, someone who had known Chrom for much longer, had barely caught his eye. Sure, he talked with her now and then, but those moments were much too sparse for her liking. During the war against Plegia, she had rarely seen him in battle, often pushed to the back lines, far from the front where Chrom usually was.

Still, no one was going to stop her from trying to get closer to him. When the war had drawn to a close, the Exalt had decided to not select a bride. At the time, he'd claimed that he "wanted to find the perfect woman", so why couldn't she be that perfect woman?

The way to a man's heart was his stomach, or so she had learned. That was why she'd decided to take up baking pies for Chrom.

She hadn't counted on running into her least favorite tactician on the way. Getting stuck in the door with him hadn't been her intent, either, but her awful luck had a tendency to act up at the worst possible moments.

"Chrom!" she said, her face flushing a bright red as she tried to pull out.

"Chrom!" Robin said, simultaneously trying to push in.

Chrom, sitting on the grand throne at the end of the vast chamber, lit up the moment he spotted them. "Sumia! Robin! Just the two I was looking for?"

"You were?" they both said at the same time.

Chrom had been looking for her? That was a surprise! She didn't think he even remembered who she was, so this sort of recognition was a lot better than what she had been hoping for.

"You were?" two more voices echoed from below.

From her place door, Sumia stretched her neck to look down, and to her surprise, she found Sully already standing before Chrom. What were they doing here?

"Oh, I'm sorry! Am I interrupting?" she said. "Should I leave?"

Glued to her side, Robin scoffed.

"It's no big deal. I was going to get you for this anyway," Chrom said. He motioned to Sully. "Sully and Kellam here have been investigating a disappearance, but they've hit a block and say they're unable to go any further."

"Yeah," Sully said, rubbing the back of her head. "Turns out these kidnappers are a lot brainier than your normal mook. Me and Kellam have been looking up and down Guillotine Gutter, and we haven't found a lick of evidence."

"Guillotine Gutter? What's that?" Robin asked, tilting his head to the side in confusion. As he did, his hair brushed against Sumia's face, scratching over her nose. It took an effort not to sneeze back.

"It's one of the more crime-ridden districts of Ylisstol," Chrom said.

"Ah. I'll have to keep that in mind next time."

From behind the door, Robin pulled his notebook and pen past Sumia and jotted something down, digging his elbow into Sumia's back. She tried not to let the discomfort show on her face; after all, Pegasus Knights were supposed to be strong, not cower back from being elbowed. She must not have hidden it well, though, because Chrom gave a nod, and some invisible force pulled open the doors.

Sumia fell to the floor with a yelp. To her surprise, her face stopped inches from the floor. Beneath her, the carpet looked soft and comforting, a little weird since it felt a lot harder.

Then the carpet beneath her squirmed, and she realized her mistake.

"I'm so sorry!" Sumia said, jumping off Robin.

"It's fine," he replied not at all looking fine with it. She stepped away to give him space, and Robin pushed himself back onto his feet, brushing his coat.

"Back to the topic at hand," Chrom said, bringing their attention back to him, "I was going to have you two take over for Sully and Kellam and investigate the case."

"Why us specifically, though?" Robin said.

"Because neither of you have anything better to do, and you also happened to be–I mean, you're the only ones I can trust to solve it since you're both among the best Shepherds we have available."

"I wouldn't say both of us," Robin muttered in a way he thought she wouldn't be able to hear.

Sumia tried not to ignore the remark, and she instead stepped toward Chrom. "Chrom, I've far from nothing better to do!" she said, bringing the pie in her hands forward. "Look, I baked you another pie."

"The twentieth time this we–I mean, yes, that's very nice," Chrom said. His eye might have twitched, but it could have also been a trick of the light. "Could you please put it on the table off to the side? I'd like to save it for later."

"And I've come up with another patrol path for the guards," Robin said as she moved to put her pie on the table. "I think I've managed to work out a few of the gaps the previous one had, and–"

"As I've said, nothing better to do," Chrom said flatly.

Sully snickered.

"Listen. You're both smart. This missing girl, she was a servant of this castle, and as such, I hold responsibility over her life, a life that could be at stake at this very moment. Please, help me find her before her kidnappers do Naga knows what to her."

Hearing those words, an idea clicked in Sumia's head. Chrom really wanted this girl found. If she solved the case, he would surely be impressed with her.

"I'll take it!" she and Robin said. At the same time. For the third time that day.

"Great!" Chrom said before either of them could get another word in. "Sully and Kellam have kept a log of the clues they've managed to put together so far, so you can start with that."

"Chrom," Robin interrupted, pointing to Sumia. "Surely you can find a partner for me better than her!"

"Yes, Robin and I can't work together," Sumia added. "Couldn't you get a partner I can trust?"

Robin's head snapped onto her. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

Chrom gave both of them a long, hard stare. He tapped his chin, and his eyes drifted to Sully and Kellam.

He tapped his chin, and his eyes drifted to Sully then to the space beside her. For a moment, he looked like he might reconsider.

"No," he said finally. "The Shepherds are supposed to be a cohesive unit of Ylisse's finest. If the two of you can't work together, cracks will form in that cohesive unit. Also, you're both my friends, and I'd like it if you could get along."

Sumia grimaced, hearing those words. But if Chrom wanted it, who was she to refuse? She glanced over at Robin. Their eyes met, and he didn't seem any more pleased with it, but he didn't look like he was about to protest either. Drat.

"We'll do it," Robin said.

"Great. You'll find Sully and Kellam's log on the side table. Once you have that, you can start your search."

Sumia walked over to the side table without missing a beat. Sure enough, there was a leather journal on the table, its cover blank, lying right next to the empty pie pan.

"Chrom, your pie is gone!"

"Is it?" Chrom called from behind her. "Oh, that's a shame."

"What happened to it?" Sumia said, panic starting to build in her voice.

"I ate it. You didn't see it, but I ate the pie while we were having our conversation."

"No you di–"

Chrom shot Robin a harsh glare. "That's all there is to the story."

"Okay." Sumia turned around, and journal in hand, she walked to the door.

As she crossed through the door, noticing the lack of a familiar purple coat, she looked over her shoulder.

"Should we get started?" she said.

Robin blinked, like he hadn't been paying attention. "Yes, we should."

He crossed over to her, and when he reached her side, he stopped.

"Let's head to my room."

"Your room?"

Sumia's head spun, instantly filled with the worst possible images she could imagine.

"Yes, to discuss the case, what else?"

"I know."

She'd have to cut down on how much reading she did, seeing as how all those romance novels were starting to get to her head. Together, they turned and headed down the hall, an image of partnership neither of them wanted to share. As the door to the Exalt's room grew smaller in the distance, she managed to catch Chrom's voice coming out of it.

"You couldn't have taken the pan with you?" he said. "It's hard not to notice a plate of crumbs lying beside the journal they were supposed to take."

"I'm sorry, sir," she heard another voice reply. "I had a hard enough time finishing this time it fast enough to avoid her suspicion."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this? It's my attempt at writing a buddy-cop story that's also a romance, that's what.
> 
> Since I'll be writing this over the weekend, I'll try to update it daily. My family just got a dog, so we're not going anywhere crazy. If I don't update, then it'll be because I lost a day to Brotherhood of Smash, or because my family decided to spend the day skiing.


	2. A Missing Merchant

"Is this a bad time? Am I interrupting you two?"

Anna looked between Robin and Sumia, sat at opposite sides of the room, her head poking out of the door.

"No, it's fine," Robin said from his bed, his sheets piled behind him in a messy hill of white cloth. "We were just having a nice chat."

"I'll pull out a chair for you, Anna," Sumia said, curled up on Robin's desk. "You just make yourself at home."

A loud scraping sound rumbled in Robin's ears as he watched Sumia pull out a chair next to her from under the desk. Before she could drag it out fully, the chair slipped out of her hands and crashed to the floor.

"Gods, can't you even pull out a chair without slipping up?" Robin said.

"I'm sorry! My hands get sweaty when I get nervous!"

"Nervous? I'm just going to talk to her!"

"You're just going to talk?"

"Yes! What did you think I was going to do, use dark magic to pull the answers out of her head?"

"..."

Robin scowled in annoyance. "Seriously?"

"Well, I don't know how you do things. Isn't there some kind of magic you use to read minds?"

"No, where did you hear that? Gods, I can't believe you."

"I'll just..."

Anna stepped between the two before they could go on, stooping down to pick up the chair on the floor. She set down the chair in the middle of the room, and she slid her legs around the back of the chair, crossing her arms over the top.

"So, what is it you two needed me for?" she asked, switching her gaze between the two of them.

Sumia and Robin glanced at each other, if only to glare daggers at the other one more time, before they turned to Anna. From behind her, Sumia pulled out the journal. She flipped through it, stopping at the page with a small sketch on it of a woman, her hair tied back behind her.

Keeping it in Anna's view, she held up the journal and pointed to the sketch. "Do you know this girl?"

Anna leaned in, her eyes narrowing as she peered closely at the face.

"Luna Jacobs?" she said, slowly nodding her head. "Yes, I remember her. Such a shame she up and vanished. I liked her. She was always so efficient. Now I always find at least one broken item whenever I ask for a delivery."

"What did you send her to do?" Robin asked.

"Oh, I sent her to pick up a stock of concoctions from a cousin of mine. Chrom's the most accident-prone boss I've ever worked with, so I'm always running low on those. Not that I'm complaining, but I keep telling him he really needs to be more careful with himself."

"A cousin in Guillotine Gutter?" Sumia said. "That seems like a horrible place for a merchant to stay."

"It is, but that cousin of mine's always been a real cheapskate."

Robin gave her a sideways look. "Couldn't the same be said for you?"

"Yeah, I won't deny that," Anna said, waving her hand, "but this cousin is on a different level. She lives in Guillotine Gutter, in case you forgot. Why do you think I sent Luna here to meet with her instead of going there myself? She didn't show the next time I sent someone over!"

"That doesn't sound good," Sumia said.

Anna chuckled. "You don't know the half of it, hun'."

"Could you give us a name, at least? It'd be a great help in finding Luna if we could talk to this cousin of yours," Robin said.

"I don't think her name would be of any help. My family doesn't have the biggest variety of names."

"Every little bit helps," Sumia said. "Could you tell us her first name, so we'd know what to call her?"

"Anna."

"What about her last name?" Robin asked, taking out his notebook and writing it down.

"Anna."

Both Sumia and Robin stopped what they were doing to stare at Anna.

Robin spoke what was on both of their minds. "Your cousin is named Anna Anna?"

"Anna Anna Anna, actually. All the girls in my family are named that."

"All the girls in your family are named Anna Anna Anna?"

"Ridiculous, I know, but it's a family tradition. They don't even change it when they get married!"

"Is your name Anna Anna Anna?"

"Nope. I changed it. It goes against the family law, but don't we all break a few laws every now and then?"

Robin put a hand over his face. "No one does that."

"Gaius does it," Sumia said.

"We make an exception for Gaius."

"So you can make an exception for Gaius, but what about me?"

"Gaius is a contributing member of the Shepherds."

"And don't think I contribute?"

"I'm not saying you don't contribute, I just focus on the more important people."

"So you can hex them to bend to your will, right?"

"Do you two need a room?" Anna shut both of them up in an instant, and their glares fell on her instead. Somehow, she missed the clear signal, and she added, "I'll be willing to rent out my room to you two for the low, low price of–"

"We don't need a room," Robin hissed. "Just... do you have anything that could help us? Some identifying features? Any connections? A location?"

"I can tell you where she usually sets up shop in Ylisstol. Though I'm not sure that would help since the two who came before you already looked through it."

"Where?"

"I believe there's a tavern called the 'Blonde Beserker' in the area. If you search the alleyway leading behind it, you should find a shop at the end. That's where she stays whenever she stays in the city."

"Got it." Robin closed his journal with a click, and his pen disappeared back into his pocket as he got to his feet.

"Thank you for your help," Sumia said, giving Anna an earnest smile as Robin walked past her. "It's very appreciated."

"Anything for my favorite tactician and... stable girl."

"She said it."

"Hey!"

"Just be sure to say Anna helped crack the case, and we can call it even. I'll take any publicity I can get."

"I'll... see what I can do," Sumia said. She turned to Robin, but she found the door already swinging shut.

Robin hadn't even got two steps away from the door when he heard it creak open again.

"Wait up!" Sumia said, and she stepped in line beside him. "I was still talking to her."

"We don't have time for niceties," Robin said. "We have a girl to find, remember?"

"Oh. I guess you're right."

A sigh escaped his lips. They continued walking for a bit longer, passing a few servants down the hall.

"Can I see the log?" Robin said after a while.

Sumia opened it instead, flipping to the page for Luna Jacobs. "What do you want to know?"

"I asked for the log," Robin said, letting a flash of irritation show on his face. "I need to see if it has what I want to know."

He reached over for it, but Sumia pulled it away.

"You already have your notebook," she replied. "Can you let me do something for once?"

He opened his mouth to protest. He thought better of it, though, and his mouth snapped closed again.

_It's just the case log,_ he said to himself. _At least it's nothing important, so it's better to just let her have this one._

"Tell me what Sully wrote down for possible suspects. I'll see if we can narrow our job down just a little."

"The only thing that's written down is a gang that lives in the area called 'the Red Herrings'."

"Does it say why they might have taken her? Any motives?"

"It just says... crime things? I think that means things any criminal would do to a young lady, like murder them. Or worse."

That was it? Surely there would be more. "Anything else?"

"Not really."

"Are you sure you aren't missing anything? Are there any notes in the margin?"

Sumia glanced to the side, like she wasn't sure if she could tell him. "Well, it does say here that she had no enemies, no conflicting interests like an affair, and that there should be no reason why anyone would want to kidnap her. That's all I can tell you."

Scowling, Robin looked over her shoulder. To his disappointment, that really was all there was for her to say.

"Then I suppose we better see if we can find anything new at the shop," he said.

* * *

When they arrived, the shop was empty. Darkness gathered in the unlit corners like clumps of dirt, and dust scaled the walls from the floor to the ceiling, one big tapestry of white and grey. Nothing looked worn and cracked, so it hadn't been empty for too long, but it had been some time since anyone had set foot inside. Or cleaned the walls, at the very least.

As Sumia stepped inside behind Robin, a cobweb hanging by the doorway caught her hair. She squeaked, combing through her hair with her slim fingers to pull it out. The webbing just latched onto her hands, so she swiped against a wall to brush it off. She shook her hand one more time, just for good measure, and once she was satisfied with it, she walked back through the door.

Only for her face to squish against the door. Sumia fell to the ground with a yelp, and the door creaked back open, revealing Robin looking at her, his hand on the doorknob.

"I'm sorry, I forgot you were there."

"It's no problem," Sumia replied, rubbing her nose as she stepped through the door.

Once she was inside, Robin shut the door behind her. She glanced around at the empty shop, dust gathered over the countertop she assumed the merchant would usually be trying to sell her items over. Without anyone trying to shove some cheap bathing soap in her face, seeing the counter left a haunted feeling in her chest.

"This feels so wrong," she muttered.

"You're right," Robin said. "If I was here on my own, I wouldn't have to worry about rubbing elbows with anyone."

"I meant seeing the shop so empty. But yes, that too."

"I could probably finish searching this place much faster if I had to solve this case alone."

"I don't doubt that. You could probably use your dark mind-control magic to scan this entire place in a few seconds."

"Wha–" Robin's eyes narrowed, and he leveled a glare at her. "I keep telling you, there's no such thing."

"If you say so."

"Just stay out of my way."

Sumia didn't argue, and they went their separate ways. Robin went over to the shelves around the back wall, while Sumia walked over to the counter. She bent over to inspect the wooden surface, checking for any strange markings that might give away a secret hiding place.

_In these kinds of stories, there was always a secret compartment where some piece of critical evidence was stashed away,_ she thought. _I just need to find where it is, which shouldn't be too hard since they're always around important places like the countertop._

As she swept her eyes over the dust, she noticed that there was a trail clear of dust over the wood. Her eyes swept over it, going off the counter and onto the floor, before it ended in a small crack in the wall.

_Rat prints in the dust? I wish rats were the only thing I had to worry about here._

Rats were much easier to deal with than a suspicious partner who she was pretty sure was hiding some dark secret. Chrom wouldn't be happy if she sent a cat at his tactician, so her hands were tied there.

From the crack, she scanned over the wall behind the counter for anything suspicious. Everything seemed fine to her. That was until she saw a patch in the wall much brighter than the rest. This part of the wall wasn't as dusty, and it stood out like Donnel standing in the middle of a fancy ball. She remembered the dusty rat prints on the counter, and an idea struck her.

A grin broke out on her face. She had found something, and, since Robin still looked busy with the shelves, she had found something before Robin.

Excitement bubbled in her chest, and she leaned over the counter to reach the section of the wall. Her fingers dug into a crack between the dust, a crack so small she would have missed it if not for the dust around its border. She pulled it open, and as the secret door moved aside, it revealed a few papers scattered inside.

Sumia grabbed the papers without a second thought. Straightening them against the dusty countertop, she held it up in front of her face, and she started to read.

She hadn't even finished the first sentence when she heard something hit the floor with a thud. It was probably her jaw, quickly followed by any happy thoughts she had.

"Oh gods," she said, her voice thin, almost unable to come out of her mouth.

Her reaction didn't go unnoticed. "What have you found?" Robin said, poking his head over her shoulder. For the first time, she detected a note of concern. Concern for her. Maybe he wasn't heartless after all.

At least, not as heartless as... whatever this was. This... this was the most horrible, most disgusting combination of words ever assembled on a single page. It was like someone had vomited all their hate and anger on a sheet of paper, before taking a fork and trying to paint an image out of whatever it was they spewed on the paper like it could be salvaged into something any person would ever want to look at. And the worst part was that it was all aimed at her.

Well, not her specifically. Just anything with breasts and the ability to bear children.

Robin seemed to share her shock as well, from the way his eyes widened as they scrolled over the top sheet.

"I-I didn't know people like this still existed," he said, and he sent her a worried glance. She was thankful for that, feeling on the verge of vomiting herself.

"Neither did I," she said, and, closing her eyes, she folded the paper. She crumpled it up into a ball, before she shoved it into Robin so she would never have to see it again. How someone could have so much hatred inside them, she never wanted to know.

Their first big clue and she was already feeling sick. The characters in stories like these always came across more gruesome things, so if she couldn't handle this, maybe she wasn't cut out for this.

_No. I'm not going to back out now. What would Chrom think of me?_

"So, is that where you found it?"

Robin's voice snapped her out of her thoughts. She blinked, and she saw that he was pointing toward the open hatch on the wall that she'd discovered.

When she nodded, Robin frowned. "Since the owner of this shop was a woman, unless she had problems with herself, I think it's safe to say that this wasn't hers. Someone else must have put that there." He pushed the hatch closed, and as he did, he took a moment to look over it. "The dust has been disturbed recently, so they must have been here not too long ago. The original owner isn't here, so whoever made this must have been here in her place. Maybe they're even the ones who kidnapped Luna."

"I think they kidnapped Anna's cousin, too." At Robin's frown, she added, "I mean, Anna said that when she sent someone after Luna, there was no one home. These things are always connected, right?"

"Life isn't like a novel, you know that? I don't know all that much about solving crimes, but even I know that sometimes, coincidences are just coincidences."

"Then do you think you could ask if anyone else has gone missing in the area. To prove me wrong."

Robin smirked, already reverting to how he had been before. "There's not going to be anyone else, I'll tell you that right now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christmas things made this chapter late. Should really get some sleep, but I just had to finish this. Don't be me, kids.
> 
> Felt like a few of the things came on too strongly, like any time I tried to be subtle it was about as obvious as a duck in a wild goose chase, and about as graceful as a horse sliding over ice.
> 
> Think of this as my Christmas present to you all. Ho ho ho.


	3. The Red Herrings

"I can't believe it," Robin said, his voice muffled by the countertop pressed to his face. "I was wrong."

Behind him, patrons milled about the bar, going about their normal lives, while up on the stage, a group of musicians sat on a group of stools arranged in a half-circle. Suima sat beside him, patting his back slowly. She didn't say anything, but she did glance around with a worried frown. A few people stopped to give them looks. No one said anything, though, so he was thankful

"Is this how it feels to be you?"

Sumia stopped. She gave a huff and looked away. "Why am I the lowest bar for you?"

Robin just sighed, waving a hand behind him. "Just... forget that. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be saying things like that. I should be thanking you. You found the secret hatch, after all."

"Oh. Yeah, that was me."

They fell back into silence. Over on the stage, the minstrels began to play.

As Robin pulled his head back off the counter, staring off into the distance, Sumia pulled the log out. She flipped to a new page, the name Smith, Jane, scrawled over the top. Out of the corner of his eye, Robin noticed this.

"So, what do we know about this Jane Smith?" he said.

"Not much. She's the daughter of a poor blacksmith."

"Can we talk to her family, then? To see if we can find any suspects? Or does it already have any suspects listed?"

"It lists the Red Herrings under suspects. Does that count?"

"Well, they're a criminal gang in this area. Of course they'd be a suspect. Even a mindless beast could have made the connection."

"Animals aren't mindless. They're–"

Behind them, the minstrels hit a particularly high note. From the way Sumia but herself off and winced, it must have bothered her quite a bit. Panne, he might have expected with her sharp hearing, but Sumia?

"Problem?" he asked.

"I don't do well with loud noises," she replied, her lips drawing down.

"I'll tell them to stop," Robin said. If the noise bothered her, it would make discussion hard.

"No, no," Sumia said, and she pushed her chair back as she got to her feet. "I can do it myself, Robin."

Robin watched as she walked to the stage, her shoulders hunched. It was a little unsettling to see the normally so quiet Sumia so irritated, but he hadn't held a conversation with her before. He hadn't ever seen this side of her, let alone any side of her at all.

"Having girl troubles? Need Teach to help you out?"

Robin looked over his shoulder. Vaike's grinning face met his gaze, leaning against the bar with a wooden mug in his hands.

"Vaike? Why am I not surprised?"

"Come on, Robin. You know I can't refuse a good drink." Vaike wrapped an arm around Robin's shoulders, and he pulled him into his side with a laugh. "So, you and Sumia, eh? I never could've imagined, since you never had the best opinion of her, and she was always so busy ogling Chrom."

"We're just working together," Robin said, narrowing his eyes.

"Yeah, sure," Vaike said, giving him a smug smirk. "Don't try to deny it, Robin. I can tell."

Robin just directed a flat stare at him. "Vaike. Just because you're married doesn't make you an expert at love. Sumia and I are trying to solve a case."

"Really?" Vaike laughed, and he slapped Robin on the back, forcing the breath out of his lungs. "Whatever you say, boss." He waved over to the bartender, and he yelled, "Hey George! Get this guy a drink!"

"I really can't drink on the job," Robin said, shooting a sideways glare at Vaike. The bartender must not have heard him, because a mug slid into the spot on the counter in front of him, spilling flecks of foam onto his coat.

"Your job, right." Vaike winked. Robin's head fell into his hands.

On his other side, he heard the stool draw back on the wooden floor, quickly followed by the thud of a book dropped against the desk.

"Okay, I think I got them to stop," she said.

Robin let out a sigh of relief, unusual considering who it was for. He pulled his face from his palm, but he saw Sumia's attention on something else.

"Are you drinking?" she said, frowning. "I don't think that's a good idea, Robin."

Behind him, Vaike stared at the open journal. "You were serious about the job thing?"

"Yes!" Robin said, his voice rising a pitch. "Why would I lie to you?"

"So it's a job date? Wow, you're even more of a stick in the mud than I thought."

"A date?" Sumia said, and a bright blush flared up on her face. "O-oh no, this isn't a date, it's a–"

A brass squeal echoed in the room, scraping the inside of Robin's ear like the sound of a rusty hinge. All conversation in the room dropped dead, and everyone turned to look at the minstrels on the stage. None of them seemed to notice, however; all their attention was focused on Sumia, their lips pulled back in a nasty sneer.

Sumia opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, another one of the minstrels rubbed the bow of his violin on the strings, and another sharp sound pierced their eardrums.

"Sumia, we're leaving," Robin said quickly.

Before he could think again, he jumped off the barstool and headed for the door. It took a second for anyone to move, but after a second of hesitation, he heard Sumia get up and follow him. He pushed the door out of his way as they left, and Sumia just barely managed to slip through before it closed.

"It looks like we'll have to talk out here," Robin said, shooting a glare back at the door. "I'm sorry I dragged you out."

Sumia's eyes fell to the floor. "It's fine," she said. "They wouldn't have listened to reason, so the reasonable thing to do was leave. If anything, I should be sorry for bringing attention to us."

"The minstrels shouldn't have focused their attention on you, so it's their fault. Not yours."

Behind them, the door creaked open and shut. They both turned around to find Vaike standing in front of the door, looking sheepish.

"Hey, I just wanted to say sorry for ruining your work date, or whatever it is you guys were doing," he said, and he ran a hand through his wild blond hair.

"If anything, those minstrels should be apologizing," Robin said. "Are they always like that?"

"Oh, yeah." Vaike frowned. "I come here a lot, and I can definitely say those guys can kill a mood fast."

"Why doesn't the owner throw them out?"

"They're the only entertainment he can afford. The guy's cheap like that. Not the greatest place you'd want your name over, but hey, what can I do."

"You have a place named after you?" Sumia said, doing little to hide the disbelief in her voice.

"Yeah!" Vaike motioned to the sign over his head. "Ogre's teeth, It's called the blond berserker!"

Sumia and Robin exchanged looks.

"Since you come here so often, then maybe you could help us," Robin said, stepping forward.

Vaike shrugged. "Okay, what do you need me to tell you?"

Sumia held up the journal, and she pointed to the sketches of Luna and Jane. "Have you seen either of these two girls? Or maybe someone who looks like Anna?"

Vaike leaned in. His eyes flicked between the two pictures, and he scratched his chin. He was really thinking hard about this.

"Can't say I've ever seen these two. Haven't seen anyone who looks like Anna either."

"What about the Red Herrings?" Robin said. "Does that name ring a bell."

"Isn't that a fish?"

"No! Well, I'm not sure, I haven't eaten a lot of fish. Have you heard of a criminal gang called the Red Herrings?"

Vaike pointed at Robin and grinned. "Oh, I know who you can talk to if you want to talk about the Red Herrings."

"Who?"

"Gaius. Chrom said he was friends with a bunch of people in the Red Herrings. If you want to learn about them, go to him."

"Gaius, got it." Robin wrote it down in his notebook, and then he turned to leave. "Sumia, let's go."

Suima didn't move, though. Instead, she turned to Vaike and took a moment to say, "Thank you."

"Oh yes, thank you." Robin chided himself for forgetting that when Sumia didn't.

"Not a problem," Vaike said. He gave the two of them a smile, before he slipped back into the tavern behind him.

Of course, it was Gaius. With how long the thief had spent around the Shepherds, it was easy to forget that he was formerly a criminal. Now that he was no longer robbing people, Gaius stayed up in the castle, so it would be easy to find him.

"Should we get back to the castle?" Robin said, nodding back to the Castle.

"Already?" Sumia said. "Why are we leaving so soon?"

"Soon?" Robin pointed to the sun sitting just over the horizon. "The sun's going down."

Sumia choked. "Oh wow. I didn't realize. Yes, I think that's a wonderful idea. My legs are getting tired."

Robin hummed in agreement. They set off toward Castle Ylisse, and as they passed through the crowd of people beginning to gather in the crowd, Robin said, "Frankly I'm surprised you haven't already passed out, considering your... poor physical condition."

"The weapons you buy for me are always too heavy. And at least I can run!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today. I was going to do a second scene, but where that scene ends is just an awkward place for the chapter, so I moved it to the next chapter.
> 
> And I know I went for the obvious with "the Red Herrings". But what if I told you that they really were behind everything?
> 
> You probably won't believe me, which is completely understandable.


	4. The Princess and the Fraud

Sumia and Robin reached the castle before nightfall, although to them it seemed to pass in no time at all. Looking back, they would tell their children that they had been distracted by each other, spellbound by the love between them.

Technically, they weren't lying. At least, with the first half. There was hardly any love between them, given how much time they'd spent on the way back bickering with each other.

Robin might have gotten tired of it, but it wasn't his fault Sumia refused to let go of their conversation.

"You're just not ready for the front lines," Robin said,

"And you're not my father," Sumia replied. "I want to see some action too!"

"You just want to see Chrom."

Sumia's face lit up in a deep red hue, just like she did whenever the Exalt was mentioned. Still, she tried to feign ignorance. "I–What? No I don't."

"Come on," Robin said, jabbing her stomach with his elbow. "If you're going to deny it, the least you can do is keep the blood out of your face every time you hear the word, 'Chrom'."

They turned another corner, and who else would they come across other than Chrom himself.

"What was that about my blood?"

"Oh, it's not your blood we were talking about," Robin said.

"That's a relief. I wouldn't want to find out that my trusted tactician and... Sumia were planning to have me killed."

"That's ridiculous. Imagine all the paperwork I'd have to do if you died."

"Don't worry, I'm not planning on dying anytime soon," Chrom said with a chuckle. Then his tone became serious. "How has the investigation gone, by the way? Have you found anything yet?"

"We're making a bit of progress. Nothing concrete, though," Robin said, and he turned to Sumia. "Isn't that right?"

But Sumia had gone completely still. Her eyes were glued to her feet, and, when Robin looked really close, it looked like she was shaking just a tiny bit.

Chrom frowned. "Sumia? Are you alright?"

Sumia nodded, but otherwise, she remained silent. Chrom stared at her for a little longer, before he shrugged. There was probably something he could have caught on to there, but, as usual, it flew miles over his head.

"Well," he said, turning back to Robin, "I'd best be going. Maribelle won't be happy if I'm late for tea again."

As he walked past them and down the hall, Robin glanced at Sumia.

"What was that?" he asked.

She mumbled something he didn't quite catch, aside from "Chrom" and "pies".

"I didn't quite catch that."

"I had another pie I was going to give to Chrom, and I forgot to give it to him!" The words burst out of Sumia so suddenly, Robin took a step back.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I can't talk to Chrom if I don't have a pie with me! I clam up when he's around, so the pies help me distract myself!" Sumia growled in frustration. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"How did you get so close to Chrom?"

"Ah." Robin tugged the edges of his lips up in a smirk. "Well, you see, I actually talk to him. No Grimleal mind-magic involved. If you tried it, you could get results."

"What do you mean?"

Robin's grin grew wider. Before she could realize what he was doing, he turned to Chrom's shrinking form.

"Hey Chrom!" he yelled. "Sumia has something she wants to tell you!"

In the distance, Chrom stopped and spun back around to face them. "What is it?"

Robin glanced back at Sumia just to see her face morph into a horrified expression. She shot him a betrayed look, before she looked back at Chrom. He could see a few beads of sweat on her forehead.

"I-It's nothing!" she said back, hissing through her teeth.

"What?"

"I said it's nothing!"

Chrom stood still for a few more minutes, deciding how to respond. "Alright," was all he said after some time before he continued to walk down the hall, disappearing behind a corner.

The moment Chrom was out of sight, Sumia turned to Robin and shoved him back. It wasn't very hard, considering how slippery her palms had become.

"Why did you need to do that?" she said.

"Well, why not?" he replied. "Come on, if you were me, you would have done it too."

Sumia threw her hands into the air. "Can't we just go?"

"Alright, alright," Robin said with a laugh. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

"What's up with her?"

"Her? We had a run-in with Chrom, and she panicked."

"Makes sense."

It irritated her to no end, how they talked about her like she wasn't even in the room. Her scowl just went deeper, and she shoveled another handful of chocolates into her mouth. It wasn't like she could hit either of them since even she knew she was about as strong as a kitten.

"Hey, where are you getting those? And could you hand me some?" Gaius asked. Of course, he'd notice the chocolate.

Sumia handed him a fistful of chocolates, but she didn't respond, too busy stewing in her own embarrassment. Gaius took them without question, and they crunched loudly as he popped them into his mouth. Robin watched with a raised eyebrow. He didn't comment, though, and he waited for Gaius to finish chewing before he spoke.

"So, Gaius, Vaike says that you know the Red Herrings, right?"

"Yep," Gaius said, his attention focused fiddling with the coin in his hand.

"Is there anything you can tell us about them?"

"Not really. I was never the seafood kind of guy. The taste just didn't ring with me, you know?"

"What? No, not the fish. The criminal gang."

"Oh. Those Red Herrings. Nah, I got nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"Yep."

Well, wasn't that suspicious? Sumia swallowed, and she leaned forward.

"Gaius, these people are your friends, right?"

Robin gave her a confused look. Gaius, though, gave her a sideways look. "Something like that, yeah."

"Well, these people kidnapped three women, and we just want to get them back. Can't you just help us out here?"

Gauis's lips pulled down. "Three kidnappings? That's a lot even for..." He shook his head, and his face shifted back into an indifferent expression. "Yeah, I'm not selling them out."

Sumia opened her mouth to speak again, but Robin pushed her back to her irritation. "That's not going to work," he said, looking at her from the corner of his eye. His gaze went to Gaius. "Gaius, if you tell us what they're up to, I'll talk to the castle's baker about baking you a batch of cookies."

"Sold."

Robin gave Sumia a smug look, and Sumia scowled harder. She fell back against her chair, and another fistful of chocolates went into her mouth. Her mouth might have been smeared with chocolate, for all she cared. Gauis's fault for leaving them within her reach. It wasn't like Robin was giving her anything else to do.

"If it's kidnappings you want to talk about, I can tell you about one," Gaius said. "I don't know much about the other two women, but I know that they kidnapped some noble-brat named Elsbeth Desmondelle."

"Do you know where she's being held?"

"Nope. I didn't hear a lick about it from them. Haven't seen them for a while, in fact."

"Did anything happen to them?" Sumia said.

"Probably. Maybe they pissed off a bigger gang, I don't know."

"That's not important," Robin said, silencing Sumia with an irritated look. Sumia slumped back, but she returned his gaze with a glare of her own.

_It's not my fault I can't think of the right questions to ask,_ she thought as another couple of chocolates disappeared into her mouth.

"Well, that means that they couldn't have kidnapped Anna's cousin. Do you know anyone else we can talk to about this?"

"Nope."

"Then I'll have to see who else I can talk to in the area."

"The guards? Uh... I'd avoid talking to them if I were you."

As they talked, something came to Sumia, a distant memory from three years back. Turning to Robin, she said, "Hey, I remember meeting someone named Elsbeth in the castle years ago. She said she was friends with Lissa. Do you think she's the same person?"

Robin regarded her with a weird look, something akin to surprise. Was it that strange that she could remember something like that?

"Well, it's something, at least," he said finally. He rose to his feet, but before he moved to the door, he looked at Gaius. "Thank you for your time, Gaius."

"Yeah, thanks," Sumia cut in.

"Hey, I did my end of the bargain. You do yours."

Sumia followed Robin as he slipped out the door. The moment the door clicked shut, Robin turned to her. His eyes fell on her lips, and for a second, she was confused as to why. Her hands touched the corner of her mouth, and when she felt something wet beneath her fingers, she realized that she still had chocolate smeared around her lips.

"Where did you get all that chocolate?" he said.

"There was a jar of it hidden in a drawer behind me." She paused, then she said, "How long do you think it's going to take for him to find out?"

"Hopefully long enough for us to get to Lissa's room. Come on."

* * *

"Were you close?"

Lissa sniffed. "Kind of. I hadn't seen her in a while, so I invited her over. I didn't know she was going to be kidnapped!"

"It's okay," Sumia said, patting her on the back. "We'll find her."

Robin watched Sumia comfort Lissa, feeling a little useless. As much as it pained him to admit, Robin had never lost anyone, or, at the very least, remembered having to deal with it, so he let Sumia take care of it instead. All he could do was watch. That frustrated him to no end.

"Her father, he already tried to find her. They searched the gang's hideout, but they couldn't find her anywhere."

"They found the gang's hideout?"

Lissa nodded. She took a moment to dry her tears with her handkerchief. "It was empty when they got there, so the Red Herrings must have caught wind of the search and moved out."

Robin stepped in, which earned him a glare from Sumia. He ignored it, and he asked, "Don't they usually ask for a ransom, though? Couldn't they have tried to catch the Red Herrings there?"

"There was a ransom, but they didn't even show up to collect it."

"I see." Robin put a hand to his chin. Very strange indeed.

_What kind of criminals set up a ransom with no intention of collecting it? To waste our time?_

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Sumia said. "What do you think happened?"

"Nevermind that," Robin said before she could continue, getting another glare from Sumia. "What sort of connection did she have with these two?" He pulled out the journal, and he pointed to the sketches of Luna and Jane.

Lissa's face betrayed no reaction. Sumia, on the other hand, widened her eyes the moment she realized that he had stolen the journal out from under her nose.

"Hey!"

"You were never going to get to it, so someone had to bring it up."

"I-I was going to!"

She reached over him to grab, but Robin lifted it higher. Sumia tried jumping. Robin kept it out of reach, though, even as her fingers scrabbled over him.

"Wait. Can I see them again?" Lissa said.

Robin froze. Sumia was quick to take advantage, snatching the journal out of his fingers before he had a chance to react. Then she brought the journal to Lissa, and Lissa peered closely at the two sketches at the top of the pages.

"Have you seen either of these women?" Sumia said. "It would be a great help if you could tell us anything at all."

"I have no idea who Luna is," Lissa said, "but Jane looks a lot like someone Gaius was talking about just three weeks ago."

"Three weeks ago? That's when Jane went missing," Robin said. Suddenly this talk seemed a lot more promising. "Do you think he might have witnessed the crime?"

"You'll have to ask him yourself. I just heard him mumble something about a skinny girl with short hair, which is what Jane looks like."

"I guess we'd better get going, then." Robin turned to the door, but a tug on his sleeve stopped him.

"Let's do it tomorrow," Sumia said, her fingers grasping the edge of his coat. "I don't want to bother him again."

"Sumia, we can't afford to wait. We need to go see Gaius now."

Just then, the thief in mention burst through the door, nearly smacking Robin in the cheek, looking absolutely livid.

"Where is that chocolate-stealing son of a–"

"Gaius, just the man we were looking for," Robin said with a smile. "We've got a few more questions we need to ask you."

"Huh?" Gaius looked confused. Robin didn't let him dwell on it, lunging in while he was trying to figure out what to say.

"Have you seen this woman?" he said, pointing to the picture of Jane on the journal still in Sumia's hands.

"That girl? Oh yeah, I saw her get taken off the streets a while back somewhere near Guillotine Gutter."

"And you didn't think about mentioning it?"

"You didn't ask. Besides, you said you were after the Red Herrings."

"Why does that matter?"

"I think it's because people like the Red Herrings only kidnap rich people," Sumia said. "You know, for ransom money."

"Yeah. Not much point in pulling someone off the streets when all they've got to steal are scraps. Besides, whoever dragged her off the streets used dark magic to do it, and the Red Herrings are about as good with magic as they are as good with money."

"Which spell did they use?" Robin said.

"How should I know? I'm no Sunshine. All I can say is that he chucked a sphere of dark energy around her and dragged her off."

"Like Nosferatu?"

"Yeah, that. Now, if you could just take a step to the side, there's a certain chocolate-stealing thief I need to deal with."

"Why didn't you report this?"

Gaius clammed up. "Well, that's a really funny story, you see I–"

"Gaius goes out to rob people whenever he gets bored of hanging around the castle," Lissa chirped.

"I see."

Robin looked at Gaius, who shrank under his gaze. Robin then looked over his shoulder to Sumia, blinking up at him with innocent eyes, somehow managing to make herself appear as innocent as a puppy. Must've been all the time she spent around animals.

"I think your chocolates are a good enough reparation for your crimes," he said.

Gaius opened his mouth to protest. Robin pushed through him before he could say a word, and he motioned Sumia to follow him.

"We'll continue our investigation in my room, see if we can't make sense of everything we've learned."

As he stepped back into the hall, he heard Sumia's soft footsteps take off behind him, and he smiled. It was nice to know she could be counted on to follow him around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to name this chapter the Princess and the Fiend, which would have made more sense, but Fraud made for a better pun. You don't have to follow such silly things as "rules" if it's for the sake of comedy!
> 
> That piece of advice only applies to writing, by the way. It's not going to hold up in court, so don't try to use that as an excuse if you end up in jail because you didn't understand that heavy rocks always followed the laws of physics.


	5. Nightfall

"It's very late. Not even the late-night songbirds are out."

Robin could only murmur something in response. He wasn't blind. He could see how dark it was outside, his head lying on his desk as he stared out the window.

"Do you think we should stop for the night?" Sumia said behind him.

"No..." Robin said, his voice muffled by the wood. "Almost... done..."

"Okay," Sumia said. From her tone, he could tell she didn't believe him, but she didn't argue.

Chrom would have snatched his journal away from him and walked out the door, Lissa wouldn't stop pestering him until he bent to her will, but Sumia, she wouldn't go against his word. That, he decided, was what her best quality was.

With great effort, he tore his face from the table. He blinked, trying to keep his focus on the notes scrawled in front of him. It wasn't easy, given how blurry his vision was. He forced himself to look closer, though. Maybe if he put his face closer to the paper, he could see past the fog over his eyes.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder and pulled him back. Something jostled in his head, and a dull throb came from inside his skull. He scowled, angry that someone had dragged him away from his work, and when he turned around, he met Sumia's soft gaze with a glare.

"You look awful," she said.

He felt awful. He was already suffering enough without having her interrupting him.

"I'm fine," he said, and he batted her hand off his shoulder. "We don't have time to take a break."

"It's only for a moment. I just wanted to know how much sleep did you get last night?"

Robin closed his eyes. It hurt just to think, but he tried to remember that trivial fact.

"An hour? Maybe two?" he said. "Look, can't you get back to work?"

"An hour? What were you thinking, staying up so late?"

"I was thinking about reassigning guard patrols. Something that I'll do to you if you don't stop."

"You know, as our tactician, we need you to be able to think straight, and if you keep denying yourself sleep, you won't be able to do that."

Robin let out a dry chuckle. Or, at least he thought he did. "It doesn't matter. Chrom hasn't had me do anything for a year. All I do is sit around and manage inventory, so I think I'll be fine. It's not like I have anything important to do."

"Well, he has you doing something now, right?"

Robin stopped. That... that was true. She had him there.

"Well, it's too late to catch up on sleep now," he said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. "This case isn't going to solve itself."

"Robin, I don't want to alarm you, but you've spent the last hour scribbling nonsense in your journal."

Robin rubbed his eyes and took another look at his journal. The letters were still a blurry mess. When he looked at Sumia, though, he could still see every detail of her worried frown in the candlelight, the dim orange glow tinting her cheeks.

"So, you're saying these aren't words?" he said, pointing to his writing.

"It's not any language I can understand."

"You don't even know any other languages."

"No. But you don't either!"

...

He must be even more tired than he thought. She'd pushed him into a corner twice now. He was disappointed in himself, more than anything.

Robin shook his head, and he hissed in anger, striking ink over all his notes. "I'll just go over it again."

"Robin. Please." A gentle hand fell on his own, like a feather landing on his fingers. Robin glanced up at Sumia, who frowned at him.

"I just want... It feels so weird seeing you like this. What happened to the brilliant tactician who pulled us through the war against Plegia?"

"I am that tactician."

"You don't look like it." Sumia brushed a hand over his head, and it was then he realized how disheveled his hair was.

_When was the last time I washed my hair?_ he thought. _Or cleaned myself at all, for that matter._

With a huff, he shook the thoughts out of his head.

"Well, there's still a lot of work to be done," Robin said. "If I go to sleep, nothing is going to get done until the morning."

Sumia tapped his head. "I can work on it. We're partners, remember?"

"I... well, I suppose a few more hours of sleep couldn't hurt."

The chair scraped against the floor as Robin got to his feet. He stumbled over to his bed, almost tripping over a loose floorboard, before his shaky legs finally gave out, and he collapsed face-first into the sheets.

With a groan, he rolled himself over and closed his eyes. The soft sheets beneath him sagged under his weight. Slowly, they started to pull him deeper under, threatening to completely engulf him in blissful warmth. The only problem was that, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't fall asleep.

After a few minutes of tossing and turning, Robin groaned. "Sumia, this is pointless!"

He tried to get out of bed, but a soft touch pressed him back down. He didn't need to open his eyes to know who it was.

"You need this. Don't try to fight it."

Robin sighed. "That's a lot easier said than done, you realize?"

"I know, but..."

Sumia trailed off. A few seconds later, her fingers left him. He heard her footsteps move away from him, and he frowned in confusion. The only things he had in his room were his bed, his desk, and his bookshelf, so there weren't that many places she could go. What could she be trying to do?

"You read fiction too?" she said finally.

"Huh? On occasion."

For a moment, Sumia went silent. Then her footsteps approach him again, and the mattress shifted beneath him.

"Do you think a story would help?" she said.

"Possibly." It couldn't hurt to try, anyway.

A paper rustling reached his ear as she turned the pages. When she stopped, she cleared her throat. His mattress shifted some more. Then she started to read.

"Once upon a time..."

* * *

Sumia awoke to the sunlight pouring in through the window, and to the sound of birdsong. As she slowly opened her eyes, she became aware of the soft cushioning beneath her. She didn't remember going to her bed, though. She opened her mouth in a yawn, but as she stretched her limbs awake, she felt something move beneath her.

Sumia shot up, eyes wide. She glanced down. Robin glanced back. Neither of them seemed to know what to say.

"Sumia... heavy..."

Or, at least she didn't. Now, her answer was a little more clear-cut.

With a yelp, Sumia tumbled off the bed, the graceful pegasus knight that she was. She face-planted into the wooden floorboards, only to jump to her feet a second later.

"You–me–sleeping together!" she sputtered out, her face getting redder by the second.

"Forget that!" Robin said. "Why do you have armor on you?"

Sumia glanced down. She was wearing normal-looking clothes, but beneath them, she also wore a select few pieces of armor.

"Well, you see..." Sumia tried to take a step back, but her foot pried a loose floorboard from the ground. The world spun around her, and in a metallic crash, she found herself staring up at the ceiling.

"Oh. That's why." Then he frowned. "Why were you sleeping on top of me, anyway? I thought you said you were going to work on the case."

"I was! I must have dozed off while reading that book to you."

Robin sighed, slumping back into his bed. "That's several hours wasted. Who knows how much we missed overnight."

"I'll leave," she said, picking herself off the floor. "The animals need their breakfast, after all."

"That would be nice," Robin said. "I need a moment to get ready for the day."

"You need to wash up, too. You look like a mess."

"Huh? Oh, that too."

She dusted herself off, then slipped through the door. It clicked shut with a click, and when she turned around, she saw Gaius leaning against the wall, a smug smile on his face.

"You and Bubbles, huh? That explains a lot."

"Huh? Explains what?"

"Why you two can keep stepping over each other's toes and still be able to stand in the same room. No one would want to do that without some sort of special connection."

"The only connection we have is because Chrom forced us to work together."

Gauis gave a pause. "That does sound like something Blue would do," he said after a moment of consideration. Then his grin took on a malicious edge. "But where's the fun in that?"

"It's the truth!"

"Come on, don't play dumb. Two of you went in there, and we don't see either of you until morning. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a baby someone in our near future."

Gaius's words put the image into her mind, and her face heated up just thinking about it. "What? No, nothing like that happened!"

"Relax, Stumbles. I won't tell a soul," Gaius said with a wink.

Sumia just wanted to curl up into a hole. She settled for turning around and running away as fast as she could before she could get any more embarrassed.

_Me and Robin?_ she thought, clutching her head. _That's never going to happen. I'm in love with Chrom!_

Then again, was that even possible? Outside of whenever pies were involved, she had never held a conversation with Chrom.

"Hey, Princess! You'll never guess what's been going on between our favorite tactician and stable girl!"

Gaius's voice rang through the halls, stopping Sumia in her tracks. She spun around, and sure enough, there was Gaius down the hall, waving Lissa toward him.

She should have known better than to trust him. If she was more confident, maybe she could have stopped him there. But she didn't.

Instead, she turned back around and got out of there as fast as she could. Maybe if she didn't pay attention to it, maybe if she pretended that it wasn't there, it would be gone by lunch.

Of course, there was always the possibility that it would still be there. If it was, Robin could find a way to get rid of it. He always knew the best ways to solve problems.

* * *

"I thought I'd find you here," Robin said, pushing aside the stable door.

Sumia jumped, and she spun around, nearly hitting him with the handle of her broom. When she saw it was him, she relaxed.

"Expecting someone?"

"No. My mind's just a little jumbled from something I heard today."

"Really?" Robin quirked an eyebrow. "Anything important?"

"Just some rumors about the Shepherds. Nothing that's true. So, can we leave now?"

"Leave?"

"Yeah. We need to investigate the Red Herrings' hideout, right?"

Robin hummed. "Gaius said that it couldn't have been the Red Herrings since they can't use dark magic. It's the only lead we have, though, so I suppose we should check it out."

"Great!"

Sumia's broom hit the straw spread over the floor, and she grabbed his hand. Before he could react, she dragged him out the stable and across the castle's courtyard.

This took him by surprise. Sumia wasn't normally this hurried.

"What's with the rush?" he said, throwing out an arm to avoid stumbling over the cobblestone.

"Remember the rumors I mentioned? They're about me."

"I see." Robin laughed. Had this flustered side of her always been there? "Want me to dispel them for you?"

"If they don't die down by lunch. We're going to have to do a lot if we want to make up for the time we lost last night."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just felt weird to write, especially the latter part, but I can't figure out for the life of me why that is, and it's frustrating the heck out of me.
> 
> Plot is going to the bench for a bit so I can have Robin and Sumia interact and develop. Don't worry, more plot things will happen in the next chapter.


	6. The Manor in the Gutters

As it turned out, Guillotine Gutter wasn't entirely cramped slums and cheap bars. Someone with a considerable amount of wealth had, at one point, decided to build a rather spacious manor in the area. Why someone with so much money would want to live here, Robin didn't think he wanted to know, and given the state of disrepair the manor was in, it wasn't hard to figure out what had happened here.

"What happened here?"

Of course, that much didn't seem obvious to Sumia.

"Does the fact that a group of criminals has taken residence here give you a clue?" he said.

"Oh, I see what you mean."

The door creaked as Robin pushed it aside, and dust spilled from its hinges. "Lissa said that when they searched here, it was empty. I'd still be careful, though. Some of them might have returned since then."

"I'll try." She pulled open a cabinet and leaned over to look inside. "So, what are we looking for?" she asked.

"Anything they might have left behind. Food scraps, clothes, weapons. If you find something, we can take out the hunting dogs and put them on a trail."

"Ooh, I've always wanted to see them in action."

Robin let out a quiet laugh. "Don't get too excited." He stepped inside, and found himself lost with how big it was.

Behind the entrance was a vast chamber, with too many hallways and stairs to count, all leading deeper inside. Scraps of sunlight crept in through tattered curtains, and splintered gashes decorated the wooden furniture scattered about the room.

"Where do we start?" Sumia said, snapping him back to reality.

"I think it would be better if we split up. We'd get this done a lot faster."

"S-split up?"

"Something wrong?"

"Well... No, it's nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. No. Maybe." Conflict flashed across Sumia's eyes. Her lips made some very strange motions, and for a minute Robin thought she would choke on her own words.

"Splitting up never ends well," she finally said. "Have you ever read any horror novels? Whenever the heroes split up, the monster or the murderer picks them off one by one."

That was what she was worried about? Robin chuckled.

"Sumia, I never took you for someone who took stock in monsters."

"A man with a knife can be just as scary."

"Well, I think I'm skilled enough to defeat any criminal we come across. If you're in trouble, I'll try to come to you as soon as I can."

Not that she was any helpless damsel, he didn't say. He glanced at her chest, and at the armor he knew was hidden beneath, remembering the feeling of that crushing weight pressing down on his chest.

"Well, you are Grimleal, so obviously you know best," he heard her say.

Maybe he'd misheard that. Him? Grimleal? Surely no one thought that anymore.

_That's just paranoid,_ he thought, and he shook his head.

"I'll take the top floor, you take the lower floor," he said.

"Alright." Sumia turned to enter one of the branching paths.

"Sumia. Wait."

She stopped and looked at him, curious. He was curious as well. Stopping her was just something that popped into his head. As were his next words.

"Try not to break everything you find, okay?"

Sumia opened her mouth to protest. He gave her a grin to let her know he was kidding, but when she shut her mouth, she only looked even more confused.

"Oh. I'll try."

With that, she spun around and disappeared into the hall. Robin watched that hall, even after she had long vanished, only tearing his gaze from it when he remembered that he had some searching to do as well.

_She's so innocent,_ he thought as he ascended a sweeping stairway leading to the balcony above. _I sure hope she doesn't trip somewhere downstairs and break all her bones._

He stopped at the top step and frowned. Was it just him, or was he slower than usual today? He should have left such sentimental thoughts outside, but apparently, his brain hadn't caught up to the fact. There was no time to dwell on things like this. He had a job to do, and the Fell Dragon himself would have to come down himself if he was going to leave it unfinished.

* * *

Sumia would be the first to admit that she wasn't exactly the sharpest sword on the rack. She'd even go as far as saying she was as dull as an old tome. Cordelia could remember the exact place of everything in the Castle's inventory, Sully knew the likes and dislikes of over a hundred different horse breeds, Chrom could rouse an army's spirits with a single word, and she couldn't even remember if she'd closed the stable door. She knew her limits, and being smart just wasn't within them.

That said, she wasn't stupid enough to follow the bag of coins shuffling away from her and into the dark room at the end of the hall.

_What is this person trying to do? It's like a carrot on a stick! But much slower. Not even an animal would fall for this,_ she thought. _I'm smarter than that! At least, I think._

If she was being honest, she felt a little insulted by this. If it were food attached to a string, it could have been a trap for a mouse or a rabbit, but this was meant for people, and no one would be dumb enough to fall for something as obvious as this.

_But what if that's the point? What if this obvious trap is here to distract me from noticing the other trap in this hall!_

Her mind whirled with the possibilities. Robin would know what to do here. He was smart, and he would be able to see right through... whatever this was.

But he wasn't here, and if she called him now, he would think he was useless. Not that he didn't already, but she was working hard to earn his respect. She'd figured it out; since he was close to Chrom, he could put in good words for her. She wouldn't impress him if she kept calling him for every little thing, though, so instead, she steeled herself and tried to think it through.

At least this told her that someone was here, someone either really smart, or not smart at all if this decoy trap was anything to go by. That meant she'd have to be very careful about this.

There was a statue leaning against the wall to her left. Its armor had long lost its sheen, time having heaped dust all over it, but the silver lance it was holding looked sharp enough. Careful not to disturb it too much, Sumia pulled the lance up and out of its grasp, before placing it firmly in her own. With a weapon in her hands, she began to slowly walk towards the door, one step at a time. As she moved closer and closer, her eyes looked about the empty hall, searching for any traps that could be hanging overhead, just waiting to pounce. The loose floorboard to her left, the gap in the wall to her right, the crooked painting over the cabinet on the wall; everywhere she looked, she noticed places where whoever was trying to lure her in could have hidden traps.

And yet, when she stopped to prod them with her weapon, nothing happened. Beneath the floorboard was just air. The walls only hid support beams and bricks. The crooked painting just fell to the floor, breaking into pieces at her feet. She glanced down the hall. When no one came running, her eyes stayed firmly away from the mess in front of her as she kicked it underneath the floorboard she pried up. No one would ever have to know.

As she swept the last of the painting beneath the floor, her gaze fell to the doorway. She took a deep breath, and she found herself wondering if she was really about to run into a dark room to follow a bag of gold on a string.

Whenever characters ran into a situation without a plan, usually it never ended well for them. So, as her breath left through her lips, she resolved that was exactly what she needed here. A plan. And who was better at making plans than the Shepherds' tactician.

_What would Robin do?_ she thought to herself. _Since he's Grimleal, he could just walk in and suck the blood of everyone there. Or maybe use some mind-magic to make whoever was in there turn themselves in. But if he didn't have either of those, he would probably have to take some information first, so he could come up with a battle plan._

She stuck her head in first, like a curious little bird taking a look inside a hollow tree. As expected, it was very dark. She could barely see anything, aside from the faint outline of people in robes in the small amount of light creeping in from behind her. And there were a lot of people here. There had to be at least twenty, and they were all staring at her.

Maybe it wasn't too late to turn back.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a purple flash. If she were faster, she would have been able to get out of its path. She wasn't, though, and before she knew it, Sumia found her arms and legs bound by hazy purple ribbons.

She only had enough time to let out the beginnings of a scream before her face met the floor for the second time that day. Through some effort, she managed to lift her head back up. To her horror, the robed figures came closer. Faceless and uniform, they moved as one, like they didn't even have a mind of their own. On their collars, they bore the familiar six-eyed insignia of the Fell Dragon. These were Grimleal, there could be no doubt about it.

So this was how she died; torn apart by cultists in an abandoned mansion. What would Robin think of her now?

A laugh rang out from behind the line of Grimleal as she pondered this. "Did you hear that? It screamed! Almost like it wants us to believe it can feel fear."

It?

Did someone just call her 'it'?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today, since my family went out skiing today and my knee may or may not have gotten bruised. I didn't think I'd finish this before bed, but I did end up finishing this at the expense of sleep. My schedule is great, isn't it?
> 
> Anyway, I forgot to mention this at the beginning, but the second half of the title, Hitting the Books, is a pun on the phrase, "Book 'em". Thought I should probably get that out there.


	7. Showing Face, Showing Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't upload yesterday because my wi-fi died. Sorry about that.

The Grimleal parted, revealing a rather small man standing at the back. He couldn't have been much taller than Ricken, and he looked so frail she could probably beat him in a fight, but the hat he wore marked him out as a Grimleal priest, and the purple tome he held at his side still glowed with magical energy. The man sneered when he saw her, and as he pushed through the crowd, Sumia shrank back.

"Hello there," he said, leaning down to look her in the eye. His rancid breath washed over her, and she gagged.

"Why the sour face? Is it because you don't like how I look?"

_No, it's because your breath smells like onions,_ she thought. She kept her mouth sealed, though.

"Females are so shallow. All they care about are looks. If I was more attractive, this would be a dream come true for you, being tied up and at my mercy. If I was the Exalt, you'd hang on to every word I say. You'd throw yourself off a cliff. Well, I'm all you've got today. I'm all you're ever going to get."

Sumia frowned, confused. What did any of that have to do with this?

"I'm... I'm sorry, did I do anything to you?"

"What did you do?" The Grimleal laughed. "Of course you wouldn't know who I am. You females wouldn't spare a second glance for guys like me. You wouldn't give me a chance. You made me who I am! The world should know my name, but because of you, no one even looks my way when I pass them in the street, no one even looks me in the eye when I talk to them. People say it's my fault, that I'm too aggressive. They say I'm too demanding. Well, it's their fault, not mine. You can't say anything in this sensitive society or follow someone around without attracting scorn. You just say whatever you want and you're deranged, you're a creep."

"All my life, I've been treated like dirt. No girl I wanted thought I was worth their time. And why did they think that? Society? Social norms? They're all chains that keep people tied down, restricted to people who've got more power and who've got better looks. It's not my fault I was born this way."

To her relief, the Grimleal leader turned his back to her, and he faced his men. Sweeping his arms around the room, he walked back down the middle of the room and said, "You all want to be free from these chains, don't you? Well, that's why I'm Grimleal. As Grimleal, no one can put me beneath their heel. Our master sees us all as equals, noble or peasant. Justice is the only thing that's fair, and so is destruction. Our master deserves our obedience, for he will set us free from the trappings of society."

This man was clearly unstable. Sumia didn't need to be a prodigy to see that. As he had said, he was at his mercy. If she wanted to escape with her life, she needed to play this carefully. So she did the only thing she could think of.

"I'm sorry for anything I did to you," she said. In an instant, his eyes snapped back to her.

"What did you say?" he said, drawing his eyebrows into a frown.

"I said I'm sorry. Maybe you've been treated like dirt all your life. I don't blame you for being like this."

"You're right about that," the Grimleal leader cut her off before she could get another word in. "It's all your fault. That doesn't change who I am. You would never give me a chance if you weren't at my mercy. But now, I am the hand of the Fell Dragon. To me, you're nothing but dirt, and I don't need to listen to you. You can't talk your way out of this, it's too late for you. No one paid attention to my magical talents when I was no one, so I won't pay attention to them now that I'm someone. Do you know anyone who can cast magic better than me?"

Robin, probably. It had only been a minute, and Sumia could already feel the bonds of dark energy around her beginning to fade. The Nosferatu binding her didn't even hurt, which was a bad thing for him. Not that she was going to tell him that. He was so invested in his monologue, anyway, so he wouldn't have heard her. Sighing, she let her face fall back to the floor, her neck sore from holding it up for so long. The spell was wearing off, she just needed to hold on for a few more seconds.

"Do you think apologizing makes you special? That's what the others thought too."

Others? Sumia lifted her head. There were others? _Don't tell me this is the man responsible._

"I'd tell you who they are, but you already know, don't you? You and your partner. Don't look so surprised. We've known you were after us ever since you showed up at our tavern to mock our music. You and the rest of your kind, you deserve to suffer. But, being the generous soul that I am, I have decided to sacrifice you all to the Fell Dragon. By the day after tomorrow, Ylisse will know the name of Ardri, the greatest Grimleal priest in the kingdom!"

He burst out laughing, his nasal voice echoing in the large room. He stopped when he realized that the only voice coming back to him was his own.

"Come on, laugh with me minions!" he said.

"Oh, did I distract them? I'm sorry!" Sumia said, jumping back. As she did so, her lance slipped out from beneath the ribs of the man next to her.

Ardri and the Grimleal watched, slack-jawed as his body his the floor with a thud. Sumia glanced at the body, then back at them, feeling a little awkward. Were they just going to stand there, or...

"Get her!"

Maybe not.

About ten robed men drew swords, axes, and daggers, and it was then that she realized how outnumbered she was. She could never hope to hold off this many people.

"Robin!" she yelled, hoping to Naga that he would hear. He said he'd come. He wouldn't break his word. Would he?

One of the Grimleal lunged forward, his sword outstretched. Sumia batted it aside with her lance. Another man jumped in from above. He raised his axe over his head and brought it down on her. Quickly, she dislodged her lance from the other man's sword and thrust it in his path.

The heavy blade swept past her face, missing by inches. Her opponent, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky, and his momentum carried him right into her lance. A third and fourth jumped into her guard before she could dislodge the corpse from her weapon. One swung his sword at her legs. The other drew his sword back and aimed it at her face.

Her lance fell to the floor, the fall softened by the body still transfixed on its shaft. She stomped down. The first sword snapped beneath her foot. The tip of the second sword stopped just before it could bite into her flesh, the blade clasped between two of her hands.

A look of surprise passed between the two Grimleal. That was all the time she needed to jump away, smashing her knee into the face of the first Grimleal as she took to the air like a pegasus. He stumbled away, his nose twisted at an awkward angle. Two more Grimleal took his place. The third flashed two knives at her, and the fourth hefted a hammer over his shoulders. As one, the three of them charged, coming at her from the front, the left, and the right.

Sumia turned herself ever so slightly to the right. The air two her sides rippled as a knife and a hammer swept past. The sword, on the other hand, ripped right through the thin layer of cloth over her chest. The second Grimleal's mouth widened into a victorious snarl.

Instead of blood, sparks flew off her chest as the tip of the sword scraped over her breastplate. He only had a moment to think about this before her fist slammed into his jaw.

The blow lifted the second Grimleal off his feet. Behind him, the fourth Grimleal focused on tearing his hammer from the dent in the wall, didn't notice the body flying toward him until it was too late. Both Grimleal tumbled back, hitting the floor with a loud crash.

Sumia didn't have much time to savor that victory. The third Grimleal stepped into her guard. She stepped back in surprise, and not a moment too soon. The two daggers flashed in front of her vision, severing a few inches off her hair, but otherwise leaving her unharmed. Not to be deterred by another missed attack, the Grimleal stepped closer and reversed his strike.

Sumia raised her arms above her. A clang rang out, and the blades bit into metal armor again. The third Grimleal hissed in frustration. He reared his head back to cave in her face. She beat him to the punch. As he reeled from the blow, it gave her enough time to lift her boot to his chest and kick out. Her foot connected with his sternum with a crack. He flew back a few feet, rolling over the floor for a second before he finally crashed into a desk at the center of the room. He tried to push himself back up, but his arms gave out, and he slumped back to the floor.

As Sumia swept her gaze over the three Grimleal lying unmoving on the floor, she thought to herself, _Maybe I'm not so useless after all._

A heavy weight slammed into her stomach, expelling all the air from her lungs. As she keeled over, clutching her stomach in pain, she saw something loom above her. She had half a mind to stumble back.

Splinters shot in every direction. Her eyes snapped shut on instinct, and wood shards pinged against her armor and stung her face. When she opened her eyes, it was to a massive hammer lodged in the floor at her feet. She yelped. The fourth Grimleal, a hulking monster of a man, grinned back. Maybe she'd spoken a little too soon.

The fourth Grimleal plucked his hammer free from the crater in a shower of splinters. He barked out a laugh and charged at her. Sumia stepped back, startled. As she did, her foot pressed down on the loose floorboard from before. It caved beneath her weight, and she lost her balance. Her arms flailed out. She yelped, and then she found herself on the floor, staring up and the fourth Grimleal. His grin widened. He knew it was over.

Then the other end of the loose floorboard clocked him in the jaw. His head snapped up, and he stumbled away. As he stepped back, he lost control of his hammer. She watched as it slipped from the cultist's grip, falling through the air before crushing his foot. He howled, and Sumia winced. Still, she wasn't one to waste an opportunity like this.

Before he could recover, Sumia lunged for the handle of the hammer sticking up into the air. Her fingers wrapped around it, and swinging it like a lever she struck him on the temple with it. The fourth Grimleal stumbled for a bit, then collapsed to the floor like a flightless pegasus.

That wasn't too hard. A grin broke through Sumia's face, and she wiped the sweat from her forehead. Her arms were already tired, but the adrenaline pumping through her kept her standing. She let herself laugh a little. It died as soon as she looked up and saw the six other Grimleal slowly gathering in a circle around her.

She couldn't keep this up for long.

A sixth Grimleal charged at her with an axe. She stepped to the side, but a seventh Grimleal jabbed at her with a knife. The knife bounced off the armor over her forearms, and she turned over and socked him in the face. A tooth came flying out, along with some blood. The eighth Grimleal cut across with a sword, forcing her back. He swiped at her again, and she was about to step back again when she heard a creak behind her.

With a clang, the sword dug into her armor. With no way of negating the impact, it cut through the metal and right into her arm. She bit her lip, trying to distract herself from how much it hurt. Instead, she reached over the sword and grabbed the arm of the eighth Grimleal. She dragged him over her shoulder before he could react and right into the path of the sixth Grimleal's axe. There was a brief scream, then a squelch. Red liquid ran down to her sleeves from the man's cloak.

Of course, the sixth Grimleal didn't stop there. With the corpse of his former colleague still attached, he placed another hand on the back of his axe and pressed down. Sumia's legs crumbled. She hit the floor with a dead body and an axe pinned on top of her. Her arms wrapped around the corpse, but before she could try to move it, she found herself staring down the tip of a knife.

"Well done," Ardri said from far behind her. "I didn't even need to cast a spell. A good thing too, since it takes me a long time to charge it up. Now, why don't you two tie her up. We don't want to stick around, or–"

An explosion cut him off. Smoke poured in from the left wall, and everyone turned to look. From behind the billowing grey clouds gushing into the room, someone started coughing, and as the dust settled, Robin stepped through, waving a hand in front of his face.

"You never know how much dust builds up between the walls until you try to break through one," he said, and coughed again.

"Nosferatu."

A flash of purple came from the corner of her eye.

"Arcwind!" came the reply.

A whirlwind of air swirled up at the center. The purple burst of energy was instantly snuffed out, and the whirlwind expelled in a ring of harsh wind, knocking away everyone standing nearby.

Robin was here to save her. The thought made her smile. He wasn't going to leave her to the other Grimleal. Though, judging by how the knife over her was slowly inching closer, there wouldn't be much to save in a few seconds.

* * *

"Robin... help..."

A voice came from his far-right, faint like there wasn't enough air to speak any louder. His eyes snapped onto the source. Beneath a large axe and a dead body was Sumia, pinned under the tip of a knife.

"We only need the girl! You two, take her and run. The rest of you lot, keep this mage busy," he heard from the other side. He looked, and he caught a brief glimpse of a man adorned with gold jewelry, the leader of the group, before he vanished behind a line of robed men.

"Stay back! Stay back or I'll put it between her eyes." the dead man said, his blade falling closer to her.

"Arcthunder!" was his only response. An orb of fierce electrical energy shot toward the robed man. He gasped, before the attack slammed into him and exploded into a cross of electricity. He fell to the ground, smoke rising from his body.

The man standing above Sumia took a step back. Under him, Sumia tried to throw the deadweight off her. The man noticed, of course. He tilted his axe away. The corpse fell to the side, leaving him free to raise his axe high into the air. The man turned the axe so that the flat side was facing down, and brought it down to knock his captive unconscious.

"Arcthunder!"

Another electric cross struck the man in the chest. He stumbled away, charred, but still alive. Robin made sure to rectify that. The floor shook as the man's heavy axe hit the ground behind his corpse. Robin's fingertips smoldered, and a faint stinging sensation trickled up to his hands. When he shook it, the stinging vanished, but Robin still frowned.

When he glanced up, Sumia was getting to her feet, looking a little dazed. Behind her, three more Grimleal jumped in to take her down. And she was just standing there.

"Sumia, behind you!" he said.

"Huh?" Sumia turned around. She wasn't fast enough to react, though, and she yelped as the three men dragged her back to the ground.

Robin gritted his teeth. This was starting to get old.

"Arcwind!" he said, throwing out his hand.

Another whirlwind picked up, throwing the three men off Sumia. He stepped in beside her as she finally got back to her feet. Some more of the robed men looked eager to extend their assault. Robin extended his hands toward them.

"Arcfire!"

With the raging flames between them, the robed men were suddenly a lot less eager to confront them. One by one, they turned heel and fled, slipping out through a door in the back. Robin swept over them for their leader, but in the confusion, it seemed he'd got away. So he turned to Sumia instead.

He didn't expect her to suddenly throw her arms around him.

"Robin! You came!"

"I said I would, didn't I?" he said. "And not a moment too late, it seems. Are you okay?"

"A little bruised." She frowned. "I've never seen you use spells like those before."

"They're new. Since I've got used to using El-tomes, I thought my toolkit could use an upgrade."

"That's wonderful!" Sumia finally let go, giving him room to breathe again. "If we hurry, we can still catch their leader," she said, and she grabbed his hand.

Pain shot through his hand, and at his hiss, she let go. A look of concern flashed across her face, and she brought up one of his hands to inspect it. Whatever she found, she didn't seem to like it, and her face contorted into a worried expression.

"Robin. What are these?"

He looked down at his hands. Small scorch marks dotted his palm, and traces of magical energy drifted off from them.

"I haven't gotten the hang of using these new spells yet. If I use them too much, they start to hurt me as well."

"What? That's terrible. Why couldn't you use weaker spells, then?"

"I don't have any on me."

As soon as he said those words, an Elwind tome tumbled out of his pocket. Sumia looked at the tome, then back to him. He just grinned sheepishly.

"I guess I was in a hurry," he said.

"Take care of yourself," Sumia said, wrapping her arms around him. "If anything happened to you, I'd–"

Suddenly, she went silent.

"You'd what?" Robin said.

Her cheeks lit up. Without warning, she shoved him away and clutched her arms to herself.

"W-what are you doing to me?" she said, and she stepped away.

"What are you talking about? I'm not doing anything."

"Are you sure? Are you sure you're not using your Grimleal mind-magic to make me say these things? To make me feel these things?"

"Sumia, I've already told you, that doesn't exist. How many times will I have to say that before that sinks in?"

He took a step toward her. She took a step back. Then it hit him; she didn't trust him. After he'd come in and saved her, she still didn't trust him. It was kind of insulting.

"Well," he said, "if it did exist, I'd use it to make you less useless."

"Useless?" Sumia looked like a kicked puppy. "You think I'm useless?"

"Yes! Because I had to put down everything to help you, their leader got away. It's your fault that a criminal is still on the loose. If you're just going to drag me down, I think I'd be better off working on my own."

Sumia glowered at him. "Well, I could say the same thing. I don't care what Chrom says, I can finish this without you."

With those words said between them, and the fire still raging in the back, Sumia turned away with a huff and walked out the door she had come through. On her way out, she tripped. As she pushed herself back up, she spared one last glance back at him. Robin narrowed his eyes in return.

Once she was gone, Robin moved to follow her. They had no more business here, and that way was the quickest way to the exit. He thought he'd spent enough time around her to build trust between them, but, much to his frustration, he couldn't always be right. As he stepped over yet another Grimleal body, dead or unconscious, he couldn't tell, a flash of pink caught his eye.

He knelt down and picked it off the floor. It was a flower. What kind it was, he didn't know. Sumia might have had an idea since she spent so much time around flowers. Then again, since her head was always in the clouds, she probably didn't pay attention to these things.

He put the flower in one of his coat pockets, making a mental note to examine it later. As he continued his walk to the door, he looked back at all the destruction he had left in the room and all the bodies lying about. With a sigh, he realized that he'd have to call someone to clean it up and take anyone who was still alive as a prisoner. With all the incoming residents for the castle's dungeons, he imagined it would mean more paperwork for him. All that could wait later, though. He still had a case to solve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, show of hands, how many of you know what "incels" are? Yeah, those guys.
> 
> If you don't know, they're just people who think women are only after sex and money because they can't land a date. They say it's because "women only care about men who look hot, they don't care about personality" when, ironically, their personalities are probably the main thing that keeps people away. And Ardri is basically that.
> 
> Ardri isn't an OC, by the way. He's an actual character from Awakening. Kudos if you can remember where he's from without going to the Fire Emblem wiki.
> 
> It's always bugged me how, in fiction, the cultists are always kidnapping women to sacrifice to their evil gods. I mean, that's what they did in fairy tales and myths from ages ago, but why do people still write them that way today? Do the cultists have a reason for targeting women, and only women?
> 
> So I gave the cultists a reason for going after women only: extreme sexism. Fun times.


	8. Divisive Opinions

Robin watched as Chrom shuffled through his notes with a frown. When he put them down, he lifted his gaze to Robin.

"So the Grimleal have been behind the kidnappings?" he said, a note of worry in his voice.

"I'm afraid so. They said they planned to sacrifice the women they'd captured to the Fell Dragon."

"That's not good. How many did you say there were?

"I'd say about forty. Though with the prisoners we have locked up in the dungeons now, I'd say there can't be any more than thirty."

"How do you think so many of them snuck past the guards?"

"There were one or two holes in this month's guard patrols. Maybe they trickled in one at a time. Speaking of which..." Robin reached into his coat to pull out his journal, but Chrom held up a hand to stop him.

"Robin, you have our guards busy enough as it is. We don't need another one."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"How about you and Sumia start working on trying to find where this Grimleal sect is hiding?"

"Alright. I'll see to it."

Chrom waved him away, and Robin turned around and left for the door. As he pulled the door aside, though, he heard Chrom call out to him.

"Wait!"

Robin looked over his shoulder. Chrom was grinning, and in a way that made him think the Exalt was planning something. Usually, he left the planning to Robin.

"I almost forgot to ask," Chrom said. "Have you and Sumia been staying completely on task?"

"Yes. We've done nothing else for the day before."

"Are you sure?"

Chrom's grin widened, and Robin's eyes narrowed. "Where are you going with this?" Robin said.

"Nothing is going on between you two?"

Robin's face heated up. "Gods no!"

"Gods, yes. People talk around the castle, you know."

"I thought you knew better than to listen to gossip."

"Denial won't get you anywhere."

"Neither will Sumia. Out of all the people I could take an interest in, you think Sumia would be on that list?"

Chrom huffed, disappointment clear on his face. "With an attitude like that, I wouldn't be surprised if you remained a bachelor until the day you died."

"Do you need me for anything else, your Grace?"

"No, you can leave."

Robin gave one last glare at Chrom, and when Chrom shrugged back, he scoffed and slipped out the door. For all his charm, sometimes he could be a little much to deal with.

The door closed behind him with a click. As Robin turned around and stepped into the hall, he crashed into someone. Books flew everywhere, and both of them crashed into the floor in a sprawling mess of robes and limbs. He blinked, and, as luck would have it, found Sumia on the floor in front of him, rubbing her head.

"Sorr–"Sumia opened her eyes, and when she saw who she had bumped into, she cut herself off.

Robin glared into her eyes. From what he could see, the feeling was mutual. He avoided her gaze as he leaned down to pick up his journal. To his surprise, he noticed another journal on the floor as well. Sumia's hand grasped the journal before he could get a better look, and she pulled it closer to her. It seems she wasn't letting go of the case.

Without a word, they got to their feet and brushed past each other. As Sumia slipped by, something pink caught his eye. He stopped, turning around to glance at the light brown hair flowing down her back, and saw pink petals tangled within it.

So she'd just gotten back from a flight. Nothing important, then. Nothing he had to ask her about.

He huffed and turned back in the other direction.

_If she's not going to talk to me, then I'm not going to either._

* * *

Sumia didn't really know where she was going. She still had the notes for the case. She was going to solve it, with or without Robin's help. The only problem was that she didn't know where to start. She had gotten used to following Robin's direction.

She had grown to rely on him.

Sumia shook her head. She wasn't working with him anymore. She had to do it himself. She wasn't useless, she would show him.

Where to start, though?

"Hey there!"

Sumia stopped. Frowning, she looked around for the source, and down the hall, she saw Anna waving to her.

"Anna?"

"Forgotten me already?" Anna said. "I don't blame you. My face isn't exactly unique."

"Oh, sorry. What are you doing out here?"

"I don't spend all my time running the shop. I'm a person too, you know."

"Oh. It's just that I've never seen you outside of it."

"I came to your room for your little interrogation, didn't I?" Anna chuckled, before her face turned serious. "Speaking of which, how has the case gone? Have you gotten my cousin back? And where's Robin? I haven't seen an arm's length between the two of you for the past few days."

"I'm sorry, we haven't gotten your cousin back."

"And your partner?"

"Robin and I had a little disagreement."

"Really? And only after a day?" Anna gave a disappointed sigh, and she pulled a gold ring out of her pocket. "And here I was, hoping I'd have someone to sell this too." She tossed it up in the air, closed her fingers around it, and slipped it back into her pocket.

"Look, since I'm on break, I was going to go to a tavern down in the town. It's called the Blond Berserker. Ever heard of it?"

Sumia shook her head.

"Well, neither have I, but a cousin of mine, the same one who got snatched, she said it's got good drink for a cheap price. She may be a cheapskate, but I don't take recommendations from business partners lightly. What do you say we head down there and talk about it?"

"I guess it couldn't hurt."

As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could take them back. A drink this early in the day? She was supposed to be working on a case, not going out to talk about her problems.

"Actually, I–"

"Great! Let's go! I can't leave my shop alone for long."

She bit her lip. She couldn't afford to get sidetracked, not when there were lives at stake in this case.

Although, now that she mentioned it, wasn't the Blond Berserker the tavern in Guillotine Gutter? The place where the kidnappings had occurred? If she got close, she could do some more investigating.

"Wait for me!" she said, and she took off after Anna down the hall.

* * *

This pink flower was unlike any flower he'd ever seen. Apparently, it was unlike anything Lissa had seen either because she was stumped as well.

"Em did all the gardening here," she said. "I only helped around the castle now and then."

"I know, but Panne is helping Donnel on the farm, Miriel is carrying out some research in the desert, and Virion is Naga knows where. You're the only one in the castle who knows anything about flowers. Think, Lissa. Where do you think this flower came from."

Lissa squinted at the flowers. She didn't say anything for the longest time. After a while, she turned around and took a flowerpot off the windowsill, a group of flowers growing out of the dirt.

"This is the closest I can find," she said, and she pointed to a bright red flower at the center of the cluster.

"Maybe they're just different colors?" Robin said.

"That's what I'd think. The only problem is that this flower is from West Regina Ferox, so unless your culprits have a pegasus carrying them there and back..."

"I see what you mean." Robin's lips drew down, and he turned away.

"Can I go back to the kitchen now?" Lissa said.

"Yes, you can go back to your..." Robin's eyes slid over, and he smirked. "Your date."

"Oh har dee har. Like you're any better, mister." Lissa frowned, looking around his room for something. When she didn't find it, she said, "Where's yours, by the way?"

"My what?"

"Your date?"

Lissa sighed, and she rolled her eyes. "Your crime-fighting partner."

"Sumia?" Robin shrugged. "What about her?"

"We're you two... you know..." Lissa made an awkward movement with her hands.

"We had a disagreement."

"Oh. Are you two just giving each other some space?"

"Yes."

Robin spent a few more seconds staring at the wall. Behind him, the door creaked open, when he suddenly realized something else.

"And we're not seeing each other!" he yelled over his shoulder.

"So you and my brother can tease me about my non-existent love life, but I can't tease you about yours?"

"The only difference is that you're hardly subtle about it. Me and Sumia don't kiss in the halls and say that we were just straightening each other's clothes."

"You can't–"

"Lissa. I have to think."

Lissa pouted. To his relief, though, he heard the door click shut.

He didn't have time to deal with his personal life. Not that he had one, being so busy.

Now that he was alone, Robin took the time to inspect the pink flower in his hands. He turned it over, the light piercing through the thin petals. There was something familiar about it, the color, the shape. What it was, though, he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

And that frustrated him. Maybe if he focused, he could remember.

With a sigh, Robin closed his eyes, and he tried to empty his mind. Deep breaths. In and out. Nothing within. Nothing without. As he calmed himself, he pulled an image of the pink flower to the front of his mind. With each passing second, it grew clearer.

Where had he seen it before? He dove into his memory, digging through the dusty parts of his mind, searching through the dark for that one–

The image of hair came to mind, a soft cascade of dried brown, swirling over and under like waves in an ocean.

Robin shook his head and scowled. He tried again, visualizing the pink flower in his head once more. This time, it materialized much faster, a spot of pink against the backdrop of his imagination. He looked back on his memory, flipping through it like pages in a journal, until finally–

_"Once upon a time..."_

Robin's eyes snapped open. He shook his head again, trying to get her soft voice out of his head. It was like charged fabric, caressing his ears as it rang loudly, but remaining on his mind no matter how hard he tried to shake it off, and at last, he slumped over, and he let out a frustrated groan.

He was distracted. It would be impossible for him to try to remember anything, not with all the confusing feelings floating around in his head. She'd helped him relax last night. Now his mind didn't seem eager to let him forget the fact.

So what? It wasn't like he couldn't rest without her around.

Well, no matter. If he couldn't think of it now, he could always try again later. The very least he could do was jot it down so he didn't forget.

Turning back to his desk, Robin picked up the journal with the blank leather cover. Taking his pen in his other hand, he flipped open the cover.

Then he stopped. His eyes narrowed, and he stared down a beautiful pattern inked on the inside cover of the book, curling and spiraling into complex patterns, weaving in and out of itself like the threads on a tapestry. A suspicion crept up on him, and he thumbed through the pages, searching for confirmation.

In the middle of the journal were the sketches of two of the missing girls. His journal didn't have those sketches. The one Sumia had been using did. A conclusion crashed into his mind, and he leaned back, his breath rushing out of him in a strong gust of wind as he reeled from it.

When he had bumped into Sumia in the halls, they must have picked up the wrong journals. As he slammed his palm into his forehead, he could only moan, disappointed in himself for letting such a thing happen. If he wanted his journal back, he was going to have to ask Sumia for it.

Well, it was just paper. It wasn't like there was anything important on there. He hadn't had anything interesting to write about since the war. He could make do with this one. She could keep his journal if she wanted to, if only as a reminder of him. Sumia was sentimental like that.

Then it struck him. Sumia. When he had last seen her, her hair had been entangled with pink petals. The scene flashed before him in vivid color, down to the finest detail. There was no mistaking it now; the flower from that abandoned manor bore the same petals Sumia had in her hair an hour ago.

He needed to know where she had gone. He threw back his chair as he got to his feet. By the time it hit the floor, he was already out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may be wondering why I haven't updated for three days. Or maybe you aren't. But I'm going to say why anyway.
> 
> To tell the truth, I was burnt out. I've been writing this story for seven days, 2,000 words per day, which is much more than I'm used to doing. To be honest, I'm surprised that I managed to keep it up for that long, but I should have known that, sooner or later, it would die out. I did run into some puppy trouble for a day, so I had to take a day off for that, but for the other two days, I've just been letting this story sit around. And now that break is over, I'll have to get back into the flow of my update schedule, so the daily updates are not going to be a thing anymore.
> 
> That being said, I'm not about to abandon this story, since it's been such a blast to write. I'll just have to find a way to fit it into my schedule. The most likely place it's going to be is on every other Monday, so I'll be alternating this with my other Fire Emblem fic, Mama Lucina, so if you like this story, you can look forward to that. Then again, I might find a better place to put it. We'll just have to see.


	9. Half of a Revelation

The Blonde Berserker. It had only been a day since she'd visited it, but it felt longer. She certainly wished it were longer; it felt like a lifetime ago, but her encounter with the minstrels remained fresh on her mind. Only this time, there'd be no Robin to protect her.

_No Robin to boss me around either,_ Sumia grumbled.

Of course, the line of thought brought Robin to the front of her mind instead. The reminder stung. Just when she was beginning to think maybe he wasn't such a bad guy, he had to break her trust like that.

Maybe she was useless. As clumsy as she could be, Sumia would have to be a complete fool to miss how weak she was compared to everyone else. But hearing Robin say that? It hurt.

"Hey, are you okay stable girl?" Anna said, snapping her out of her thoughts. "If you're going to lose your lunch, turn away. Please."

"Oh!" Sumia leaned away, a bit flustered. As she tried to cover up whatever must have shown on her face, she said, "I'm fine. No need to worry about me. I can take care of myself."

Anna gave her a mischievous grin. "Thinking about your partner?"

"N-no. Why do you think I would care?" Sumia cursed herself for stuttering. She hoped Anna didn't notice, but judging from the way her grin grew ever wider, it hadn't slipped past her.

"Still in denial? I can't help you if you won't admit," Anna said, her teeth flashing in the afternoon sun.

"There's nothing to admit."

"Of course you'd say that." Anna chuckled. "But we're not here to talk about your love life, are we?"

"I don't have a love life. Who'd fall in love with me?"

Anna rolled her eyes and sighed. "Like I said, stable girl. Get your head in the game. We can't spend the rest of the day standing around like a flock of flamingos, can we?"

It was then that Sumia realized that they had, indeed, been standing idle in front of the door for the past few minutes.

"Oh, I'm sorry!"

"For what? Standing around like a jester with his pants down? If you want someone to apologize to, apologize to yourself for looking like an idiot."

Sumia blinked, confused. "I don't follow."

"Ah, don't sweat it!" Anna said, waving her concern away. "Now, are you going to let us in or what? Time is money, and I can feel it slipping out of my pockets right now."

Sumia winced. "Oh. Sorry." She pushed the door inside, allowing Anna past her before entering herself.

To her relief, the stage was empty. Sumia swept her gaze over the room to see if the minstrels from before might have been hiding in the corner, but they seemed to have vanished.

"Hey! Are you going to sit down or what?" Anna called from the bar, having already taken a seat.

Sumia blinked. Safe to say, she turned bright red once she'd realized she had made a fool of herself yet again, and she moved over to take a seat beside Anna without a word. As the chair scraped against the floor, Anna waved the bartender over.

"Get us something to drink, will you?" she said.

A minute later, Sumia found a wooden mug in both her and Anna's hands. She'd paid for them, of course; the Fell Dragon would fall from the sky before Anna would skip over a chance to save money.

Anna was also the only one taking advantage of the opportunity, guzzling down her drink by the liter. Sumia, on the other hand, just stared into her own reflection in the murky liquid.

As Anna set down her mug with a wooden clink, she glanced around the room, as if she were looking for something.

"It's awfully quiet in here, wouldn't you say?" she said after a moment.

"What do you mean?" Sumia said.

"I mean, don't these kinds of places usually have a minstrel somewhere to keep the atmosphere high?" Anna motioned to the stage, before she added, "Look, why keep a stage in the building if no one's going to use it?"

"Believe me, you wouldn't want to meet the last band that played up there," someone else spoke behind them.

Sumia glanced over her shoulder, and found Vaike sitting on her other side.

"For a bar this cheap, their beer isn't so bad," Anna said. "I'm sure their music can't be that much worse."

"It's not their music that's the problem. Mostly. It's the people that I was talking about. Ain't that right, Sumia?"

Sumia nodded, and, for the first time that day, took a sip from her drink. It was a tiny sip, so small an onlooker might have thought the liquid in her mug had scalded her. The bitter taste sharpened her focus, and she turned to Vaike.

"Where did you say they went?"

"I don't think I ever said anything about them leaving."

"Oh." Sumia frowned into her mug. "So they're still here?"

"Oh no, they're gone," Vaike replied, giving her a carefree smile.

"Did the owner finally kick them out?"

"Nah. As awesome as the guy is for recognizing Teach, he can be a bit of an idiot."

"That's coming from you," Anna said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Vaike leveled a glare at her, but Anna quickly hid her face in another long sip.

Sumia put herself between the two of them before they could get another word in. "She hasn't been around you long enough, so she doesn't know what she's talking about."

The answer seemed to satisfy Vaike if the smile spreading back across his face was any indication.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said, putting his hands back behind his head.

As Sumia sighed, glad at having calmed things, Anna scoffed behind her. Vaike didn't seem to notice, and silence settled over them once again.

Sumia went back to staring down into her mug. She was content to let the silence stew, but she did have a job to do. Usually, Robin would carry out the interrogation from there, but he wasn't there, and it was then that she came to the realization that she needed to carry this out on her own.

"If the owner didn't kick them out, what happened?" she said.

"Oh yeah," Vaike said, scratching the back of his head. "They just left."

"Left?"

"Yeah. If you ask me, I'd say it's an improvement. I'm all for being a man, but I really don't think the 'kill all women' is something you got to tack onto that, you know?"

It was then that something in Sumia's head clicked into place.

"Where did they go?" she said, snapping onto Vaike with a speed that surprised even her.

Vaike raised his hands before his face. "I don't know. They didn't leave a note, talk with the owner; nothing. They up and vanished." Then he paused. "Or, most of them did anyway."

"So you're saying that some of them stayed?"

"One of them."

Excitement rose in Sumia's chest. "Where is he now?"

"There."

Sumia followed his finger pointing over her shoulder to the other side of the room. A rowdy bunch had gathered in the corner, all of them laughing and waving their mugs in the air, splashing liquor around them. And at the center, Sumia recognized one of the minstrels from before, exchanging words with the rest of them like he had known these people all his life.

"Thanks, Vaike. You're a big help," Sumia said. As she got out of her chair and started to make her way across the room, she heard Anna say, "You couldn't have been a better help than I was."

She brushed it aside. She had a lead, and that was probably more than Robin had right now. It wasn't as if she could tell, but she liked to think it was like that.

_Who's the useless one now,_ she thought.

Heads turned to her as she approached. The men huddled in the group glared at her as she drew closer; perhaps they were like-minded to the Grimleal people, or maybe they were Grimleal as well. Then again, they might just have suspected her of coming to ruin her fun, but she thought this was a bit more important than that.

Her target hadn't noticed her yet, still flinging his cup around as if to ward off an alcoholic wyvern. The silence around him hadn't seemed to key him into the situation yet, although judging by the glazed look in his eyes, his drink must have already taken hold of his mind.

"Like, take these scars," he said, pointing to the gashes running down his arms, his sleeves already rolled back. "I just got 'em today. And you know what? I'm already back on my feet!"

"Ahem." Sumia tried to clear her throat to catch his attention, but to her disappointment, it came out a lot quieter than she would have liked.

"But how'd you get these scars anyway, I hear you ask? Well, just this morning, me and my buddies got attacked by this crazy mage and–"

"Ahem." She tried raising her voice. The man just kept going, however; only when one of his companions jabbed him in the gut did he finally notice the woman standing over him, much to her embarrassment.

"Oh. I didn't see you there sugar," the man said. He flexed his arms before he added, "See anything you like?"

"I hope you'll forgive me for not being impressed," Sumia said, "but I've seen many people who look more impressive than you."

The man's gaze hardened. "Figures," he said. "Then could you kindly bug off? I was in the middle of a story."

"Actually, your story was the reason why I came over." Sumia pointed to the scars running down his arms. "Do you think you could tell me how you got those scars?"

"These?" The man chuckled, as if recalling something comedic. "Well, as I was saying, me and my friends, we were attacked by this crazy mage. He just started cooking people up left and right, a complete monster. I tried to save the rest of my friends, but he threw me aside with his wind magic. These battle scars? They're from when I got tossed over the floor. Of course, I got right back up after that and–"

"This mage, was his hair white, by any chance?"

"White like ice. Not a surprise, considering how ice-cold the guy was. So, as I was saying–"

"Was there anyone with him?"

The man's face scrunched up at this. He looked away for a moment, before he turned back to her. "Well, I do remember there was someone else with him. Some girl in a suit of armor. Anyway, all hope seemed lost, when one of my friends chucked a fireball back at the guy. He wasn't expecting that, so it sets his shirt on fire, and that's when I drew my sword and–"

"That didn't happen."

"What?" The man frowned. "Well, you weren't there. Your fragile soul wouldn't be able to take how dangerous it got in there until I–"

"But I was there."

The man blinked once. Then he blinked again. On the third blink, his eyes lit up in recognition.

"Oh yeah. I remember you. You were the girl who sat back while your friend did all the work."

_Useless,_ Robin's voice echoed in her mind.

"I'm not useless," Sumia growled.

"Well, it seems to me–"

"You're going to tell me what you know, or... or I'm going to call the guards to arrest you."

"For what, sugar? Hurting your feelings?"

"For the kidnapping of four women. Or helping with it."

The man's smile didn't waver for a second. His forehead, however, glistened with sweat. "What are you talking about?"

"There's a group of Grimleal in Ylisstol kidnapping women off the street to sacrifice to the Fell Dragon. And you were one of them."

The atmosphere froze around them. Chairs scraped against the floor, and when Sumia looked up, she found that all of the man's 'friends' had left him to his fate. As it turns out, people didn't want to be associated with cultists.

"Those guys? I left them. I joined the Grimleal because I didn't want to work, not to take orders from some sexist beast."

"Then you should have no problem telling me what they are up to at this moment."

This time, the man scoffed. "I may not like them, but I'm not about to rat them out."

"Why can't you? You don't work for them anymore, and if you help me, Ylisstol will remember you fondly."

"Because I can. Deal with it, lady."

_He's not going to budge, you know,_ she could hear Robin say, his voice mocking. _What are you going to do, pay him to talk?_

Sumia clenched her hand into a fist. Almost as soon as she had done it, she unclenched it.

She wasn't supposed to get angry. Whenever she got angry, the animals would run away from her in fright, so she'd trained herself to remain calm. She liked to think that staying calm was the one thing she wasn't useless at. So why was she getting so worked up about this?

_You can't even keep yourself calm. A pity,_ Robin's taunting voice echoed in her head. _What's wrong? Can't you handle a little resistance? You used to be so sweet. That's why I fell in love with you._

She was going crazy. That was the only explanation. Crazy or not, though, she could still feel the heat creeping up her face. It was probably an embarrassing sight, seeing her turn bright red in front of a drunk Grimleal.

She settled for punching him in the face instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back? That's right, it's daddy Sakurai, bringing us... another Fire Emblem character.
> 
> And me too.
> 
> So I realized that I wasn't leaning into the romance side of this, so I started doing that a little more. It might be a little too late for that, but it's my first time writing this kind of thing. I'll do better next time, and there will be a next time, I can promise you that much.
> 
> I have also decided that Saturday will be the day I update this fic. I know this chapter wasn't uploaded on a Saturday, but that's only because tomorrow I don't have school, so I get a free pass for Sunday. Or Monday morning, if you want to nit-pick. But I'll try to update on Saturday. No garuntees, since Over the River gets updated a day before, but I'll do my best.
> 
> Next update will be January 27th. Fingers crossed.


	10. Our Time to Shine

"Could you please slow down? I'm having trouble understanding what it is you're trying to say," Chrom said, pinching the bridge of his nose, holding out his other hand in front of him.

Robin and Sumia kept their eyes glued to his hand, like a pair of hogs starved of slop. The moment his hand went down, words gushed out of their mouth, lapping over one another until their voices jumbled together into an incoherent blur.

"The Grimleal..."

"When the sun..."

"The outskirts..."

"Vaike's bar..."

"Just below the..."

Robin turned to shoot Sumia a glare. She glared back.

"Let me speak!" For once, their voices merged into one. Both of them leaned away, taken aback, only for their scowls to return seconds later.

"Stop speaking when I–"

"Quiet!"

Chrom's hand shot back up, and Robin and Sumia's mouths snapped shut with a click. Sweeping a frustrated look between the two of them, Chrom's shoulders slumped as he let out a long sigh.

"Robin," he said, his gaze landing on the tactician. "You first."

Robin gave Sumia a smug nod. She thought him untrustworthy? Chrom seemed to disagree.

Sumia huffed and looked away. Showed what a good sport she was.

_Oh well. It's not like I care what she thinks,_ Robin thought bitterly.

Chrom cleared his throat, and Robin brought his attention back to the matter at hand. Stepping forward, he put a hand over his heart and made to bow.

"Your Grace, I–"

"Robin. Please, do away with the formalities. We're friends; you don't need to impress me."

Robin straightened himself and coughed. "Of course. I forgot."

"You. Forget."

"As I was saying," Robin said, raising his voice, "I've found where the Grimleal are hiding out."

"Oh? Have you?"

"Yes. They've set up a base at the end of the Prism mountain range just a little beyond the outskirts of the city. It's as far as pegasus knights are allowed to roam without straying over city limits."

"I see." Chrom leaned back into his chair, pressing his fingers together as he looked into the distance, deep in thought.

They didn't have time for them to think about it. They had to act.

"We must send troops to assault it before they have the chance to escape."

"We will, Robin. Don't worry," Chrom said, nodding. "But should we let your partner speak her part as well?"

"Sir, we don't have time–"

"Surely you could spare a few minutes to listen."

Robin huffed. "We know where to strike. I don't see what else we might need to know."

Chrom didn't answer. Instead, he motioned for Sumia to speak. She made to bow as well, but again, Chrom stopped her.

"Sumia, you don't need to. As I said, we're all friends here."

Strong words, coming from the Exalt. Robin expected Sumia to turn into a stuttering mess. Her reaction was a little less drastic.

"Oh. I suppose that must have slipped my mind."

Robin snorted. "It seems like a lot of things tend to slip your mind, don't–"

"They plan to execute the girls at sundown," Sumia said before he had a chance to finish.

"Huh?" Robin turned to look at Sumia, frowning. "I thought they needed five maidens to complete the ritual."

"I thought so too, but their ringleader decided to do it, even with the chance of failure such recklessness may bring."

Robin's eyes narrowed, and he leaned in close to her. "Where did you find this information? You can't just bump into runaway Grimleal on the streets."

"But that's exactly what happened."

"Really?" Robin rolled his eyes. "And all you managed to get out of him was when the sacrifice was happening?"

"He told me that there are only twenty-five of them left, and that out of all of them, the leader is the only mage. He also said that the prisoners will be kept at the highest cavern on the mountain, to shorten the travel distance to the summit."

"You got all that out of him? How? Did you bribe him?"

"Actually," Sumia growled, leaning in to meet him, "I hit him. A lot."

Their faces were close now, so close her breath tickled Robin's nose, sending a tingling feeling over his face.

"You? You couldn't hurt a bug."

"But I can hurt you. Does that make you less than a bug?"

"Robin. Sumia," Chrom said, pushing them away from each other. "Save the drama for the bedroom."

"Shut up!"

Chrom wilted a bit under their combined glares, and he raised his hands instinctively. Robin looked at Sumia. She looked back. A mutual feeling passed between them, and for once, it wasn't the feeling of grating on each other's nerves. It wasn't missed.

"Hey now," Chrom said, and he took a step back. "If you kill me, Lissa is next in line for the throne. Don't do this to–"

The click of a doorknob stopped them before they could get any further. Robin glanced at the back of the room just in time to see Frederick stroll in, his head held high. Upon seeing him, both he and Sumia stepped away to make room for him to step between them, while Chrom slumped back in his seat in relief.

"Frederick. How goes the patrols?" he asked.

"As well as can be, sir," Frederick said. "The new patrol patterns are so effective at catching criminals, there's no one left to cause any sort of fuss."

Robin cleared his throat, bringing Frederick's attention to him.

"Almost no one left." Turning to Robin, he added, "How goes the investigation, by the way?"

"Actually, we've found the ones behind it. How quickly do you think you can assemble your troops to storm their hideout and arrest them?"

"Ah." Frederick's eyebrows creased as he frowned. "Well, since you've had all the soldiers patrolling around the city, there's none left on standby."

Robin cursed. Damn him and his overly efficient planning.

"How much time do you need to get troops to the mountain on the outskirts of town?"

"An hour at least."

The sun was already hanging over the horizon by a thread. A glance outside told him that they didn't have that kind of time.

"We'll need someone to go in first, then. Someone who can keep them from killing the girls before the rest of the troops arrives." Looking at Chrom, Robin asked, "Is Cordelia back from the Border Pass yet?"

"I'll go."

All eyes turned to Sumia. Under the eyes of all three of them, Sumia's eyes fell to her feet. At first, Robin thought she was making a poorly timed joke, but did someone making a joke look as nervous as she did right now?

"You can't do that!" Robin said, throwing his arms into the air. "You're not strong enough to handle twenty-five men at once. You'll be killed."

"And Cordelia can?"

"She's Cordelia. She won't be slaughtered the moment she enters the enemy's line of sight."

"But I will?" Sumia said, stepping close to Robin.

"Let's be honest, Sumia. Have you ever realized why I kept you in the back lines? It's to keep you safe."

Sumia threw back her hands, groaning in frustration. "Well if I stay in the back lines, I'll never get any better! You blame me for being a deadweight, but you're the reason why I'm so useless!"

Robin scoffed, crossing his arms as he stared deep into her eyes. "Then tell me who was it who spent all her time picking daisies or feeding the horses to skip out on training? It wasn't Cordelia or Sully, I'll tell you that."

"Well, I'm not going to be useless! Not anymore!"

Before Robin could get another word in, she spun around and ran out the door, slamming it as she slipped outside.

As he listened to her footsteps fade, he clenched his teeth.

The stupid girl was going to get herself killed.

* * *

As Sumia bolted through the halls, the red carpet a blur beneath her feet, anger coursed through her, blooming out from her chest and into her fingertips as she curled her fingers into a fist.

Stupid Robin. Even after all they'd been through, he still thought she was useless. Well, she'd show him. She was going to rescue the kidnapped girls all by herself.

_It's not like I care about what he thinks, anyway,_ she thought. _He doesn't matter to me, not like Chrom does._

When she burst into the stables, her pegasus reared back with a loud neigh, startled. She recognized her mistake, and she approached it slowly, arms raised.

"Calm down," she said, speaking carefully. "It's just me."

It took a moment for it to realize it really was her, and when it finally did, it let its hooves fall to the ground. The pegasus shook its head, its silver mane flowing in the wind. Her pegasus was a proud and majestic creature, and yet it showed no struggle as she put straps over its muzzle and led it outside.

"The Prism mountain range?" she murmured, combing her slim fingers through the silver strands in her pegasus's mane. "We were there just this afternoon, weren't we girl?"

Her pegasus snorted, as if to agree with her.

"That's right. Do you think you can take us back there?"

Another snort, and a flick of an ear. A yes, then.

Pulling the reins over the pegasus's head, Sumia dragged herself up on its back, taking a moment to settle herself in. She flicked the reins, and with the flap of its wings, the pegasus lifted off the ground.

Just as her pegasus took to the sky, she felt something grab onto her. The pegasus neighed at the sudden shift in weight, but otherwise remained unfazed. Sumia, on the other hand, screamed and lashed out.

Her armored hand struck the cover of a tome. Sumia craned her neck as far back as she could to find Robin clinging onto her waist.

"Robin? What are you doing here?" she squeaked.

"Making sure you don't kill yourself," he said through gritted teeth.

"I told you, I'm going to show you I'm not useless. You can't come with me."

"Well, it's a little too late to get off."

Sumia opened her mouth to protest, but when she looked down she saw that the ground was quite a good distance away, getting smaller by the second.

"I guess you're right," she said.

"Y–yeah," Robin said, closing his eyes.

His grip tightened around her stomach, and that's when something clicked inside her head.

"Robin. Have you ever flown before?"

"I'm starting to think I should have."

"Oh."

A second passed in silence. Then she said, "Well, don't let go. I don't want Chrom to hate me for killing his best friend."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? A story I haven't put off for next week? Preposterous!
> 
> I've been feeling majorly burnt out this week, and I've been taking a few days off to sort of reorganize where I've been going with most of my other stories, so if you've been following them now you know why I haven't done much this week.
> 
> I don't think I need to tell you that this story is drawing to a close, as it should be pretty obvious from the way I've set things up. There's probably only two chapters left in the story. Looking back, I really put more thought into the "buddy-cop" part of the story than the "rom-com" part, and there really isn't much in the way to build up a romance, something that I've found kind of disappointing. The next time I try writing one of these–and trust me, there will be a next time–I'm going to keep that in mind, but until then, this is all I've got.
> 
> Next chapter will be released on Feb 1st.


	11. An Uphill Climb

It was quiet.

Normally, Sumia liked silence. Silence meant time to sit down and read a book. Silence meant no one was spending time berating her for how useless she was.

When it came to silence, Sumia could stay quiet very well. As it turned out, she was also good at keeping other people quiet too.

As she slid a guard off the shaft of her spear, Sumia looked up just in time to see Robin remove a hand from the mouth of another guard, tucking a bloodied knife back in his pocket. Her eyes met his, and they both narrowed. They were beyond talking now.

Without a word between them, they stepped over the bodies and continued over the rocky terrain. They had approached from behind the mountain to avoid being spotted. Something Sumia was certain she had suggested. Either way, the highest outcrop behind the mountain was only a short distance away from their destination, and as they closed in, Sumia could hear voices coming from around the bend up ahead.

Robin was the first to turn the corner. When Sumia came up behind him, he held out an arm to stop her. Still bitter, it seemed.

She ducked under his arm and looked around him. If his irritated snort was anything to go by, he wasn't happy about it.

Below them, a platform stuck out from the side of the mountain. Robed men carrying various weapons wandered about, running in and out of purple tents set up all over the plateau. And over it all, the six-eyed mark etched in gold on the flag watched down on everyone pace about the camp, like a wolf over a flock of sheep.

"That's quite a lot of people," Robin felt the need to say.

Sumia huffed. They'd faced more as Shepherds. Thirty was hardly "a lot of people", but apparently, Robin thought otherwise.

"I can take them," she blurted out.

Robin gave her a baffled look. "You? What do you–" He cut himself off with the shake of his head. Now was not the time to bicker. "Fighting the Grimleal with the Shepherds is different from taking on thirty of them by yourself, you know that?"

"I'm not a fool!" Sumia stomped her foot angrily. "I can fight! Just you see!"

"Hold up," Robin said, catching Sumia's elbow before she could run off.

Sumia spun on him, an angry look in her eyes.

"Let me go!" she said. "I'll show you who's useless."

For a second, she thought she registered surprise in his brown eyes. It was there only for a split second, so she thought she might have imagined it. Just the thought of Robin being surprised at anything sounded ridiculous.

"I can't let you do that," he said, his voice taking a firm edge.

"Why not?"

"You don't have enough time?"

Sumia ripped herself out of his hand and crossed her arms. "How can you tell?"

Robin turned to the sunset behind them, casting long shadows on the glowing rocks, and he put out a hand against the sky.

"You can tell the time to sundown by measuring the distance between the sun and the horizon," he said, "and from the looks of it, you only have fifteen minutes before the sacrifice is made, maybe less. And that's if they don't decide to threaten the hostages. Chrom wouldn't be happy with us if that happened, would he?"

Sumia huffed again. "Well, do you have a better idea?"

"Of course I do," Robin scoffed. "We need to..."

"You don't have one, do you?"

"Hey, you try to come up with a plan in an instant, tell me how that goes."

Sumia frowned. A small part of her said to concede defeat, to make things easier for everyone.

"Well... you could probably... erm... take out the leader? Ardri? Without a leader, the rest won't know what to do."

"This isn't one of your fantasy books, Sumia. They'll keep fighting, even with their leader dead."

"Then what if you started a rock slide and crushed everyone?"

"The caves they're keeping the prisoners in will be sealed off. The whole purpose of having a hostage is to keep them alive."

"Can't you blast everyone to bits with your spells or something? You said you were trying to learn Arc-spells. Why not use those?"

Robin held a worn blue-green tome in front of her face. "I've only brought this Elwind tome. I didn't have time to grab anything else."

"Then... then... oh, it's not fair!" Sumia groaned in frustration and slammed a fist into the wall. "You've always done the planning. How am I supposed to know what to do?"

Robin's hand wrapped around hers and pried it from the wall. "How about you leave the planning to me, then?" he asked. "You never had a problem with it in the Shepherds, did you?"

He had her there. Sumia tore her eyes from his with a frown, conceding defeat. "No."

Robin sighed. After a second, he said, "Our priority will be to make sure the hostages are safe and keep them that way."

Robin didn't seem one for stating the obvious, but today, it seemed, was full of surprises.

"How do you plan on doing that?"

"I'll distract them from here with my magic. Meanwhile you," he said, pointing to the cave on the other side, "find the prisoners and sneak them out while they're distracted."

It... it couldn't be as simple as that. Could it?

No, there had to be some catch.

"How do I know you're not going to leave me alone? You're Grimleal too!"

"Sumia."

Something in his voice told her to look at him. She thought it was an authority. When she looked him in the eyes, though, she saw it was pleading.

"You want to save those people, don't you? You want to get Chrom's attention, right? Well, I do to. You may not believe me, but the only way we can make my plan work is if you trust I'll play my part."

His eyes didn't waver. He wasn't lying, as far as she could tell. Of course, Robin was smart, so maybe he could trick her into thinking he was telling the truth, but she didn't have any other choice here.

If she refused to trust him, if she didn't take that risk, they would fail because of her. She would be useless.

"Alright. I'll do it."

As she turned away, Sumia caught a glimpse of a smile on Robin's face. Peeking over the edge once more, she watched the Grimleal scurry around, when she came to a realization.

"Wait. How are we going to find the prisoners?" she asked, glancing back at Robin.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, those caves could go in all kinds of directions. We want to get the prisoners away as quickly as possible, but we can't do that if I get lost in there."

Robin's head tilted at an angle. He frowned, and he glanced up at the sky. He hummed, letting his chin fall into his hands, before his face lit up.

"I've got an idea, but it's a bit of a weird one."

Sumia nudged him. "I said I'll do whatever it is you want me to do."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." She paused. "Wait. This won't involve me getting hurt, will it?"

"If you think you can take on thirty Grimleal at once, you should have nothing to worry about," Robin said.

Sumia winced. There was no feeling quite like having your words thrown back in your face.

"Then what is it?"

"Give me your lance."

"Eh?" What Robin could do with a lance, Sumia wasn't sure, but she handed it to him anyway. He said whatever he had planned, it wouldn't hurt. Would it?

Taking the lance in his hands, Robin spun it around, testing its weight. As he set it down, he turned back to her and asked, "Do you trust me?"

"Wha–I guess so."

Robin gave her a funny look. One that had her a little on edge.

Then he shoved her off the ledge.

As Sumia's vision stopped spinning, she turned herself around and looked back on the ledge. She barely managed to catch sight of a purple robe disappearing around the corner

Above her, she could hear muffled shouting from the Grimleal, and as she felt two firm hands wrap around her arms and drag her over the floor, the rough ground scraping against her back, she thought, _Forget weird. This is downright dumb!_

* * *

Robin watched as the Grimleal dragged Sumia away, never leaving her form until the dull pink color of her armor disappeared into the cave.

He felt bad, throwing her off the ledge like that, but he hadn't the time to explain.

Moving quickly, he slipped behind the rocky face by his side. He snuck over the rugged terrain, his footsteps barely making a sound against the ground as he made his way around the border of the Grimleal camp and to the side far away from the exit.

Then he stopped. A tall ledge towered before him, a particularly noticeable obstacle in his way. Careful not to make a sound, he grabbed hold of it and started to haul himself up. Sweat began to roll down the side of his face, and that's when he remembered the setting sun to his side.

With the sun shining on him, someone was bound to notice him.

"What's one of our guys doing up there?"

Robin hissed between his teeth and forced himself to move faster.

"Idiots! He's the mage from the city! Kill him!"

With one last grunt, Robin threw himself over the top.

A flash of yellow caught his eye. Robin twisted away, and a javelin sailed past his face. It gave an audible thunk as it buried itself into the stone surface. The rocky wall trembled, and a few rocks fell loose. Robin's eyes followed the rocks as they tumbled down, bouncing and rolling over the mountainside, before coming to a stop at the mouth of the cave.

_Dammit,_ Robin thought. _If I keep going, they might shut off the cave._

A jolt shot up his arm as he hit the ground. Almost instantly, he found himself under attack from three people at once.

He leaned back. A golden string tugged loose at the tip of a sword. The first Grimleal pulled back, his sword clutched to his chest. Two more Grimleal stepped in for him, and they raised their lances in sync.

Robin's Elwind tome was out in an instant. He flung his hand out to them, and a blue glow pulsed from his fingers.

"Elwind!"

An arc of wind shot out toward them. The three Grimleal flew away, struck dead on by the spell. As they tumbled over the floor, two more took their place, the tips of their swords aimed for his chest. His palm aimed toward them, and he curled his fingers for another attack.

"Elfire!"

"Elwind!"

A spinning fireball struck his Elwind head-on. The arc-shaped gale bent around the fireball, before they both dissolved into the air. The two Grimleal attackers pushed through, their swords still pointed at him.

Robin twisted to the right. The first thrust brushed against his stomach, cutting into his robes. As it slid back, Robin swept his arm aside to block a second thrust coming straight for his face.

The Grimleal snarled, and they lunged for him again. Robin never gave them a chance. With a single word, he blasted them out of the air. One of the Grimleal slammed into a ledge, a gasp escaping from his lips as he fell to the ground. The other missed it entirely, and he disappeared over the edge with a scream.

Robin barely had time to feel good about it. He barely even had a second to step away before four more Grimleal charged for him. No matter how many he knocked away, they just seemed to keep coming.

As his hand lit up with magical blue energy, Robin thought, _I sure hope Sumia hasn't knocked herself out by now. I could really use her help._

* * *

"Oof!"

The guard tossed Sumia unceremoniously to the floor, her chestplate shrieking as she slid over the stone. Groaning, she turned herself around just in time to catch the guard disappearing through the door. That was his mistake, considering he didn't even notice she wasn't tied up.

_Not that I'm complaining,_ she thought. _Maybe they ran out of rope, or maybe they didn't have time. It's probably none of my business, though._

With a sigh, she pushed herself off the ground, dusting off her armor. She turned around, her eyes quickly picking out forms in the dim torchlight. To her relief, she found four other girls leaning against the walls, on their knees with their hands tied behind their back.

The one to the far right straightened the instant she saw her. "A pegasus knight? Oh, I'm so glad you're here! I thought we were going to be stuck down here forever!"

"Huh? Pegasus knight? Where?" another said, their voice hitched in surprise.

"You are here to save us, right? You're not going to leave us here to rot, are you?" a third voice said.

One of the figures shuffled in her place. "Oh, please can it with the dramatics, will you? She wouldn't go into the trouble of coming down here if she was going to leave us. Hey, do you think you can free me first? I'll pay you if you do!"

"Shhh!" Sumia hissed. With how loud they were being, you would have thought Naga herself had decided to stop by for a visit. The guards would have to be deaf to have not heard anything, and alerting the guards was the last thing she wanted to do.

Judging by the rapidly approaching footfalls, though, she'd already done that.

"What's going on here?" the guard yelled, his voice resounding deeply through the confined walls as he burst into the cell.

In one swift motion, Sumia spun on her heel and threw out a punch. Her fist met his face with a satisfying thwack. A bundle of rope fell out of his hands as he stumbled back, clutching his nose. His eyes widened with shock, his eyes falling to his nose, then growing even bigger when he noticed Sumia closing the gap between them.

Ducking under his clumsy swing, Suma stepped forward and smashed her fist into his jaw. A faint cracking sound rang out, and the guard slammed against the wall, before falling into an unmoving heap.

Looking down at the rope lying at her feet, she thought, _They didn't have a supply shortage. They were just idiots._

Then she turned back to the four prisoners on the floor, and she said, "Let's get you all out of here."

Without a word, she went around and untied them from their bindings. As she pushed through them to the front, they rose to their feet in varying degrees of stability, some shaking their hands to get the blood flowing back into them. Sumia let them, waiting by the doorway until they finished.

One by one, their eyes fell back to her. Whispering a quick, "Come on," she motioned for them to follow her, and she slipped out the door.

The room before her opened into a vast network of tunnels, winding and twisting in every which way. As they filed in after her, Sumia glanced around at the tunnels, a frown on her lips.

"So, do you have any idea where we're supposed to go?" one of the girls asked.

Sumia pointed straight ahead. "Straight."

The girl frowned. "That doesn't sound right. Are you sure they didn't make any twists or turns along the way?"

"Yes. They went straight."

"I'm sure they took several turns when they brought us here. Maybe you need to–or, we could go straight. I suppose that works too."

Sumia turned away and started walking before the girl could finish her sentence. The footsteps behind her told her the prisoners were following, not that it mattered to her. When she got out, she was going to give Robin a piece of her mind. Throwing her off a cliff, getting her dragged away by the Grimleal.

_He used me for something, at least. He doesn't think I'm useless anymore._

Briefly, she became aware of the light up ahead. Very faintly, she could hear the sounds of shouting and screaming in the distance as the ground trembled, and suddenly she found herself sprinting toward the exit.

The sight that greeted her outside was not pleasant. As the setting sun bathed everything in a lucid orange glow, shimmering and wavering like a mirage in the desert, she found Robin with his back pressed to the side of a cliff. Countless Grimleal stood gathered before him, their weapons gleaming in the sun as they swung them about. And at the very back stood Ardri, his long robes flapping in the high-altitude winds, an ugly sneer stretched over his face as he sat back and watched, a tome in his hand.

Almost as if he'd felt her eyes, Ardri's gaze snapped onto her. His sneer stretched even further, something Sumia didn't think looked humanly possible.

His hand raised to aim at her, no above her. A red glow surrounded his fingertips, and as he uttered an "Elfire!" a fireball shot forth from his hand, sailing through the air in a brilliant streak of red and yellow over the softly burning sky, before it crashed into the mountainside, sending cracks racing across the stone surface.

With a deafening groan, chunks of rock broke away from the mountain. They broke and bounced against the mountain as they tumbled down. Beside her, someone screamed. Sumia would have too, if she wasn't frozen in place, watching as the huge chunks of debris race toward her.

"Elwind!"

One second, she was watching as large pieces of the mountain fall right at her. The next, she found herself spitting out pebbles from her mouth. She glanced over at Robin. He caught her gaze in an instant, and he gave her a grin. A pile of groaning Grimleal lay at his feet, stunned.

They wouldn't have another chance like this. Sumia started to turn back to the other girls, and she opened her mouth.

"Elfire!"

Her head snapped back behind her, just in time to see a fireball strike the Elwind tome out of Robin's hand and over the edge, leaving Robin unarmed.

"Give up!" Ardri said. "Everyone knows mages are useless without their magic, and now that you've lost yours, you must concede defeat to the superior opponent: me!"

Sumia hadn't the slightest clue how mages went about living their lives. She didn't know if they had any sort of code of honor like the knights, so she had no idea if anything Ardri was going on about was true.

What she did know was that, as a tactician, Robin didn't care about any of those rules. She'd have been lying if she said she didn't find Ardri's terrified expression as Robin tackled him to the ground a little satisfying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Looks at last upload date*
> 
> Eh-heh-heh.
> 
> Yes, I know I'm a month late. I said I was getting back into writing this, but then I went and abandoned it for a month straight. If this were any other fic, I would just use the usually excuses, like school or extracurricular responsibilities, all that fun jazz, but in truth, I just sort of decided to stop writing this for a while.
> 
> Aside from a few bumps on the road (looking at you, Chapter 9, Half of a Revelation), this is probably the fic I've had the most fun with. From the incel-esc villain to the puns, I just really liked writing this one, so when I stopped having fun with it, I just decided to put this down for a bit.
> 
> But now I'm back, and we're in the home stretch baby! This chapter, as sort of my grand re-debut, was quite hard to write. I had to go through several versions of it before I found something that stuck with me. Hopefully, it will have been worth the wait, with everything and everyone finally coming back together for one last big battle. Like I said in Over the River, I'd like to be able to stick with this story long enough to see it finished. I can't make any promises, but that's what I'm hoping for.
> 
> As for once I finish, I'll start writing something else to fill in my Saturday uploads. It won't be Fire Emblem specifically, since I've got Mama Lucina for that, and I'm probably going to go back and replay Awakening (or finish Three Houses) if I want to juggle between two Fire Emblem fics again, but it will feature Lucina as one of the main characters. One of the things I thought I could've done a lot better with this story was the romance stuff, so this one will probably lean a lot more into that, so if you like how I write things, stick around for more details on that when I get them.
> 
> Yes, I know that plug was a little shameless and shoehorned in. But hey, some people might want to know what I'm up to, you know? It's not always about you.
> 
> Anyway, I'll try to shoot for an update next week. Again, I promise nothing, but you can be sure I'll be staying up late for it if I have to.


	12. Our Grounded Struggles

Robin slammed Ardri into the ground, and a bunch of tomes tumbled out from beneath Ardri's coat. Almost instantly, Ardri let out a screech of pain. Robin felt his eardrums shatter, and his hands flew to his ears.

Ardri was quick to throw him to the ground. Robin's back hit the stone floor, and his vision burst into stars. Through the haze of pain, Robin saw something sharp draw closer.

He rolled away. The tip of a lance lodged itself into the rock where his face had been seconds ago. In one motion, Robin shot to his feet and swung for the Grimleal's face.

His fist smacked against flesh with a disappointing clap. Robin hissed and pulled his hand back. The Grimleal, on the other hand, didn't seem as amused. His face twisted into a snarl, and from the edge of his vision, Robin saw the lance come back around.

Bones cracked. A few drops of blood splattered over Robin's face as a rock smashed into the side of the Grimleal's face. As the Grimleal stumbled away, Robin glanced over to see Sumia grab another rock off the ground. She pulled her arm back, and it took a second for Robin to realize she was aiming in his direction.

With a squawk, Robin ducked. The rock sailed over his head and right into the chest of another Grimleal. The Grimleal's axe clattered to the ground and he gasped, taking a step closer to the ledge. He was unbalanced. All it would take was a single kick to finish him off.

"What are you waiting for? Get them!"

Robin's head snapped back. Ardri raised his hand toward the girls making their way across the plateau, a purple tome in his hands. Ducking under another thrust of a lance, Robin snatched a tome off the ground. He barely had time to read the spells written on the pages before he flung out his hand, fingers pulsing with energy.

"Nosferatu!"

"Thunder!"

Almost the instant the words left his mouth, Robin grimaced. _A thunder tome?_ Robin thought. An E-class spell wouldn't be strong enough to negate a D-class spell.

A ball of thunder shot out into the air, crackling and spinning like a self-contained storm. It hit the dark magic spell mid-air, and sparks flew out in all directions. The Nosferatu spell wavered, but as the thunder died down, it pressed on, and the thin tendrils of dark energy clamped around Sumia's leg.

Sumia yelped as she stumbled. She flung out her arms in an attempt to keep her balance. As she wobbled to her feet, a lance clipped her shoulder. Her armor clattered against the mountainside, metal grinding against the rocks. As she hissed in pain, the Grimleal who had hit her raised his spear again. Robin's heart jumped to his throat.

"Look out!" A voice rang out across the clearing, loud and clear. It took Robin a moment to realize it was his own.

Steel screeched against steel. A shower of sparks lit up the burning orange sky as Sumia pushed her attacker's lance to the side. Without waiting for the Grimleal to recover, Sumia struck him across the face. A splatter of blood flew out from his nose, and he stumbled away, dazed.

Turning to the girls, huddled to the side in shock, she said, "Keep running! We'll protect you!"

The four girls glanced between them, and they nodded. They took off for the exit, and their footsteps echoed clearly over the rugged stone. As Robin watched them break for the exit, he saw Ardri raise his hand again. Robin's eyes fell to the tome in his own hands, and an idea hit him.

"Nosfera–gah!"

Ardri collapsed to the floor, clutching his head. The thunder tome bounced off his head, flipping over several times in the air before it disappeared over the ledge. All eyes fell on him as he rolled around on the floor, cursing the Divine Dragon. Robin took a different focus, and he dove for the nearest tome he could find.

His fingers wrapped around the cover, and as he jumped back, flipping through the pages of the tome for spells, a silver streak crossed his vision. It flew through the air, glimmering in the sunlight, before coming to a stop straight through the heart of yet another Grimleal.

* * *

One of the girls let out a scream as a Grimleal stepped in front, his axe raised into the air.

Pebbles scattered as Sumia yanked the lance out from the wall, and without missing a beat, she turned around and flung it at the Grimleal.

The lance plunged into his heart just as he opened his mouth. Whatever he had been about to say was lost in a bloodied cough. His feet carried him back, the force of the lance pushing him away. To her horror, the Grimleal's axe continued to travel down, headed straight for one of the girls' heads.

"Wind!"

A gust of wind pushed the tip of the axe back into the air. It arched back over the Grimleal's head, and as his legs gave out, the weight of his weapon pulled him over the edge of the cliff.

A shadow fell across their path. Sumia's eyes widened, and she sprinted forward. She flung out a hand, stopping the tip of a sword just short of piercing the side of one of the girls. She felt someone gasp by her side, but paid it no mind as she shoved the sword away. As the Grimleal fell, three more took his place.

Axes and swords flashed in the sun. One of the Grimleal, one with a lance, thrust first. Sumia reached out and grabbed the shaft. Grimleal realized his mistake only a second too late. He tried to pull away, but Sumia pulled harder. She swung the lance, and the Grimleal crashed into two more Grimleal attempting to attack her from the side.

Twirling the lance in her hand, Sumia glared down the rest of the group. They glanced between each other, and a worried look passed between them. They could tell she knew what she was doing. Maybe they weren't as dumb as they looked.

"What are you waiting for?" Ardri said. "There are twenty of you and only one of her!"

A collective murmur spread across the crowd, and Sumia groaned internally. As the Grimleal started to gather, hoisting their weapons into the air, she slid her foot forward. The tip of her lance came up, leveled between the Grimleal. A beat of sweat rolled down the side of her head.

_I've faced bandits tougher than this lot,_ she thought. _I'll be okay. Right?_

"Nosferatu!"

"Elfire!"

A spire of flames rose up from behind the Grimleal, purple streaks intertwined with the red. All the way on the other side, Sumia could hear Ardri's frustrated scream. His glare locked onto Robin. Robin's lips widened into a taunting smirk, an Elfire tome in his hands.

"Elfire this!" Ardri said. With a wave of his hand, a streak of purple energy cast off from his hand and toward Robin.

The Grimleal took that as their signal to charge. A loud yell rose across the clearing. Blades flew in all directions, a whirling mass of steel. Stepping in front of the four girls behind her, Sumia blocked deflected a thrust with the shaft of her spear and redirected another with the tip. She ducked, and a third strike flew over her head. Before it could hit one of the girls, Sumia swung her lance up.

The steel tip dug into the Grimleal's elbow, and with a cry, he dropped his sword. When the axe crashed into the floor beside her, missing her foot by an inch, she began to realize that maybe taking on twenty Grimleal at once wasn't the best idea. Even if she could kill all of them in a fight, that meant nothing when they could simply overwhelm her in numbers.

Behind her, one of the girls gave a terrified whimper. "What can we do?"

"Get to the exit," Sumia said as she stepped back, the tip of an axe grazing her stomach.

"But the exit is..."

Sumia glanced over her shoulder. A short distance away, she could see the exit, a small ledge leading down and behind the mountain. And standing in front of it was a group of five more Grimleal, smirking as they held their lances and swords in front of them, blocking them off from the exit.

Something sharp slid across her side. Acting on instinct, Sumia spun around and grabbed the arm of the Grimleal holding it. He opened his mouth to say something. Sumia yanked his weapon out of his hands before he could, and she thrust the hilt back into his stomach.

As he fell back, disappearing beneath the mass of Grimleal, Sumia's hand fell to her side. Something warm ran over it, and she hissed in pain. The Grimleal quickly closed in around her, and she saw one of them pull his lips back into a malicious grin. They had her cornered. Just like last time. The tip of her spear wavered. What had she been thinking, taking on so many Grimleal at once?

_No,_ she thought, shaking her head. _I can't doubt myself, or I'll never show Robin he was wrong._

A wave of steel crashed back down onto her. She tried to keep up, blocking and deflecting as many of the oncoming blades as she could, but there were just too many for her to keep up. As she turned to the right to bat away an axe, a sword would scrape her cheek. When she swung low to block a lance aimed at her feet, an axe blade would slam into her shoulder.

Then she tripped. Sumia cursed her clumsy legs for choosing the worst possible time to fail her. The ground rushed up to meet her. She threw her arms out, stopping her face from hitting the floor. She rolled away, and a boot slammed into the ground next to her. As quickly as she could, Sumia pressed her palms against the floor and tried to push herself up. The tip of a lance stopped her.

"Die!" the Grimleal above her hissed, and he lifted his weapon a little higher.

"Elwind!"

Suddenly, the Grimleal flew over her head. He slammed into the wall with a crack, and he crumpled to the floor, dazed. Sumia ripped the lance from his hands and shot to her feet. Her lance came up with a stroke, knocking another Grimleal to the side as he came charging in.

As the Grimleal stumbled back, knocking down a few of the other Grimleal, Sumia caught a glance of Robin. He looked much better than she did, with only a few small scratches running down his robes. His wide eyes, though, told her that she should probably be paying more attention to the Grimleal than him.

A Grimleal came charging in at her, his sword aimed for her chest. Sumia stepped past his blade. She grabbed his arm. And she hurled him into the path of an oncoming Nosferatu spell.

"You idiots! What are you doing?" Sumia heard Ardri yell. "Don't get in my way! You lot! Get the other one!"

More than half the Grimleal broke away and turned their weapons toward Robin. With their ranks thinned, the Grimleal that remained stepped back, keeping their weapons aimed at Sumia and the girls behind her. Over the mass of purple robes, Sumia caught Robin's gaze.

He nodded, a silent message passing between his eyes. A grin broke out on his face, and he lifted his hands, blue magic overflowing through his hands.

Sumia wished she could understand whatever it was he just said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway through, I realized this whole action set didn't have much of a point, something you do not want to do with any scene, action or otherwise. As such, I lost a ton of motivation to write, and I have decided to split it between two chapters. I'm really dragging this on, aren't I?
> 
> For anyone wondering why I didn't update Brotherhood of Smash or Over the River, my computer broke Wednesday-Thursday, so I wasn't able to get any work done. Hopefully I'll be able to make up for my productivity stint with Mama Lucina, but you never know.
> 
> Next update will be on March 21st.


	13. The Wind in Our Sails

_Why is she just standing there?_

Robin scowled as he blasted another Grimleal off the cliff. The tomes spilled on the floor had almost all been low-level spells, and all were in poor condition. He'd already burned through one of the D-level tomes.

"Nosferatu!"

Again, Ardri hurled a Nosferatu spell in Sumia's direction. With a growl, Robin blasted it away with a strong gust of wind. In his hands, he heard the tome fizzle out as the pages crinkled and shriveled up. He chucked it away, and the tome gave a satisfying crack as it smashed into the face of a Grimleal.

"For Grima!"

Robin stepped to the side, and a lance stabbed the air beside him. The Grimleal growled and thrust his lance out again. Robin dragged the lance, allowing the Grimleal's momentum to carry him over the edge. As he watched the Grimleal disappear into the river below, foaming as it crashed against the cliffside, he heard the dust shift behind him.

Two more Grimleal leaped forward, their swords a blur of silver as they arched down toward him. Robin jumped back. Chunks of rocks bit at his shins as the two Grimleal ripped their swords from the ground. Robin made to step back again, but when he looked behind him, all he saw was open air.

In front of him, the two Grimleal grinned. They knew they had him cornered. Robin knew it too. He tensed, holding his arms up to catch any oncoming attacks. One of the Grimleal lunged forward, his sword flicking out like a tongue eager for a taste of blood.

His foot snagged on a rock. He gasped, blood spurting out of his mouth as he crashed into the floor, a lance driven straight through his back.

The other Grimleal kicked his companion's body aside as he slashed down at Robin. Robin slipped away again. His foot hit against something solid, and Robin glanced down. A red tome sat at his feet, its cover scorched and dull. Just from looking at it, he could tell it only had one use left.

The Grimleal's eyes snapped back onto him the moment he realized he had missed. A block of red entered his vision before he could react as a heavy tome slammed into his face.

The Grimleal stumbled back. His arms flailed as he tried to keep his balance, but his feet found nothing but air. With a cry, the Grimleal's robes flew out before him as he disappeared over the edge. Robin watched with grim satisfaction as the Grimleal grew smaller and smaller in the distance.

"Nosferatu!"

Robin cursed. His attention snapped back to the rest of the fight. He looked just in time to see a flickering purple tendril unwind itself from Ardri's fingertips and slither toward Sumia. Flinging his hand out to intercept it, he flicked the tome in his hands and cast a spell.

"Fire!"

The fireball that flew out from his hand was wild and unfocused. It sputtered and popped as it flew, sailing over the heads of three Grimleal before it crashed into the dark magic, going out in an instant.

What little remained of the Nosferatu spell snaked through the ranks of the Grimleal, catching Sumia's arm. Whether through her own clumsiness or the effect of the spell, Sumia fell right into the path of a Grimleal's fist, catching her in a nasty uppercut.

Robin winced as her head crashed into the rocks. They couldn't make it through, not if their attention was divided like this. Bending down to pick up a bright yellow tome off the ground, Robin held his arms forward, his fingers crackling with electricity. The choice was obvious.

He let out a yell and charged forward.

* * *

Robin was charging through the Grimleal like a maniac. Given how little anyone knew about him, that very much well could be the case.

One Grimleal fell back, his hands clutched to his face as electricity hovered around his head. Another Grimleal stabbed his sword down, catching the tail of Robin's coat and pinning it to the mountain. Robin just slipped out of his coat and hurled it back into the Grimleal's face. As that Grimleal flailed around, clawing at the tangled purple mess in his face, three more Grimleal stepped in Robin's path. Their weapons gleamed and glittered as they rose in the air. They all descended onto Robin in a tangle of clashing steel, each blindly stabbing down as they tried to rip through Robin.

By the time they realized he'd slipped through their legs, Robin was already bolting across the clearing, making his way toward her.

Pinned against the mountainside and barely holding off an onslaught of blades, Sumia felt a little disappointed in herself. If Robin could break away why couldn't she?

The shaft of a lance struck between her breasts, the shockwave of the hit spreading over her chest. Sumia stepped back, her ears ringing. One of the girls gave a sharp cry as Sumia bumped into her, reminding her exactly why she had to stay.

As Robin slid in next to her, he flung a Grimleal back with a thunder spell.

"What were you doing?" he said, ducking under a sweeping axe.

Sumia reached over him and grabbed the axe. "Was I supposed to do something?" she asked, and she swung the Grimleal into the path of another.

The Grimleal stopped, unsure of what to do. Robin was on him in an instant, casting a thunder spell in his face. The Grimleal's hands flew to his eyes. His lance clattered to the floor.

Sumia snatched it up, spun on her heel, and thrust it through the chest of a third Grimleal. He staggered back. Sumia tore her weapon from him with a squelch, and he disappeared into the crowd. An axe swing forced her back. Sumia's arm tensed. The tip of her lance gleamed bright as another Grimleal rushed forward, sword outstretched.

He jumped, and his arm came forward. The shaft of his lance left his fingers, flying through the air. Caught off guard, Sumia flicked her lance to the side, and the Grimleal's lance sparked as it ground against the mountain. She turned her attention back to the Grimleal the second she was sure his lance wouldn't kill anyone.

His knee slammed into her cheek. She felt something crack inside her mouth, and she stumbled away. The second he landed, the Grimleal drew a knife across her face. It flew past her neck, missing her by inches as her hair flew past her face. Sumia tried to bat him away, her lance useless at such a close range, but he stopped her arm and dove for her again.

A surge of electricity crashed over his face, and he screamed. Sumia swung in before he could recover. Her foot crashed into his chest, sending him tumbling over the cliff. As his cries faded away, Sumia touched her throat.

She could almost feel the knife sliding over it. A few inches closer and she could have died.

_We can't keep this up._

"Sumia," Robin called over his shoulder. "About earlier, I'm sorry about that."

"I mean, it worked, right? This is how it's supposed to go, right?"

A Grimleal slipped through Robin's slew of spells, and he charged at him with a yell. Sumia thrust her lance into his path. His attention snapped to her, and his sword lunged at her. Sumia feigned a jab. The Grimleal tried to block her attack, but Sumia twisted her lance around his blade and thrust it into him.

"Wait," Sumia said. "I didn't mess it up, did I?"

"No, you did fine. It's everyone else that's the problem."

"Then what do we do?"

As she spoke, a shadow cast over them. In a blur of purple, one of the Grimleal leaped at them, the tip of his lance pointed straight at her. Sumia let it fly past her. As the Grimleal hit the ground, she grabbed his arm and hurled him back into the other Grimleal. They scattered like insects. A path cleared through them, and Sumia realized how few Grimleal there were left.

"We go for him." As the Grimleal picked themselves, Robin pointed past them at Ardri standing behind them, huddled in his robes, an angry sneer on his face. "Rush through their ranks and kill him. The rest of them should be easier to deal with without him hurling spells over them."

"What about us?" one of the girls said.

"Hold this." Robin tossed her a lance.

"But I don't know how to use this, sir."

"As long as you point it at them, they should leave you alone."

* * *

The Grimleal broke like the tide against the seashore. Sumia swept aside the Grimleal at the front, and any who slipped past her took a Thunder spell to the face. They tore through them, robed men and weapons flying everywhere as they rushed past until all that was before them was a vast open space.

Sumia didn't think she'd seen Ardri look more angry or afraid.

"Y-you're not supposed to do that!" he screeched.

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Robin asked, his face set in an arrogant grin.

"Yeah, what he said!" Sumia said helpfully.

Ardri muttered something under his breath. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't pretty.

They couldn't afford to hesitate, not with the rest of the Grimleal on their heels. They needed to get this done fast, Robin had told Sumia.

Without hesitation, she rushed in, her lance extended. Ardri turned his attention back to them. His hand glowed with dark energy. He flicked his hand, and a tendril of sickly purple magic shot forth.

Robin replied with a spell of his own, running at Ardri as he let loose a Thunder. The two spells crashed into each other. The dark magic ran through Robin's spell, but Sumia had half a mind to step out of the way.

Ardri fumbled with his tome with a loud curse. He held his hand out to cast another spell, but Sumia was already upon him. He tried to get away. His robes fluttered under his feet, causing him to lose his balance, and by the time he recovered, Sumia's lance had ripped straight through the purple tome in his hands.

Robin saw it before she did: a flash of red flickering out from beneath the Grimleal's robes. She yanked her spear back to skewer him through. Ardri sneered, and he held a palm out toward her.

"Elfire!"

Before he could think about what he was doing, Robin lunged forward. His hands grasped Ardri's arms, and he twisted it to the ground. Magical energy surged out from Ardri's hands, blanketing the stone floor in flames.

Ardri pulled on his arm in an attempt to break free. Robin held tight easily, no matter how hard the Grimleal struggled, and in one swift motion, he hurled him over the edge. Ardri screamed once, his fingers catching the edge before they slipped and vanished from sight.

Robin tore his eyes from the cliff. He looked back up at Sumia, who returned his gaze. A smile broke out on her face.

"We did it!" she said.

"Yes, we di–"

The ground shook. Robin looked down, and he saw cracks beginning to spread out under him. Ardri's spell must have weakened the stone. He tried to take a step forward. The cliff only dipped further.

He looked back up. Sumia watched him, eyes wide.

Behind her, Robin saw the Grimleal shuffle around. A murmur passed through them, before one voice broke through the rest: "The Royal Guard is here!"

The Grimleal exchanged glances. They glanced back at the exit, then to Robin and Sumia. Their weapons raised, and they closed in. It seems they were determined to take them down with them.

"Help!" one of the girls from before screamed.

Sumia glanced between the girls and Robin. Her face fell, and at last, she locked her gaze with him.

"What do I do?" she asked, panic rising in her voice.

"Help them!" Robin hissed. "Forget about me!"

The rocks gave another loud crack. Robin glanced down at them, growing larger by the second. He looked back up at her and held her gaze. His lips pulled up in a grin. It might as well have been his last one.

Then the cliff broke away, and Robin felt the air rush up around him.

A pink blur passed over his head, and something firm grabbed ahold of him. It took him a moment to realize he was clutched firmly in a pair of arms.

"Sumia?!"

"Hold on!" she said.

Robin looked down. The mountain seemed to stretch on for miles below. At the very bottom, a river tossed and swept around, and Grimleal robes fluttered out from the rocks dotting the shore. He appreciated the effort, but all Sumia seemed to have done was ensure her own death as well.

A gust of wind brushed through his hair. Wings spread out beneath them, sparkling white like powdered snow, and before he knew it, Robin found himself on the back of a pegasus, Sumia's arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you feel it? The end draws near.
> 
> If anyone was to ask me what my favorite part of writing this story was, I'd have to say it was the chapter titles. Puns, all of them. They may not be the best of them, but every time I came up with one, I've been left patting my own back for days. Good times, good times.
> 
> Anyway, story is almost over. All things must come to an end, and this one has run its course. Some of you may have issues with stuff that happened in this chapter. Those will (probably) be addressed in the next chapter, so don't waste your time writing a lengthy PM telling me how I dishonored your family line, targeting each and every one of my personal insecurities before saying you put a hit on my head for a billion dollars. Patience, please.
> 
> Final chapter will be uploaded on the 28th.


	14. When Ends Meet

Ardri couldn't ever remember feeling something this painful. He'd compare it to a hangover, but only idiotic, brutish men needed to drink their problems away. He didn't need to drink. He wasn't weak like all those other men.

Stars swam in his head. With a groan, he shoved them away, and he pushed himself off the ground. Grains of sand dug into his palm, like how the magic from those powerful El-tomes ate away at his flesh whenever he cast them.

_What happened?_ he thought. _The last thing I remembered was the Grimleal and me on about to sacrifice those females when..._

Then everything came back to him. He'd almost had the ritual finished, ready to decorate the mountains with female blood when that traitorous tactician and his female appeared. His men, poor souls only seeking freedom from the tyrannical rules of society, cut down like murderers on death row. His fingers curled, and his blood boiled just thinking about it.

It was all the fault of those wretched females, he just knew it. Their one mistake was leaving him alive; he'd have his revenge on their kind, and justice for his brothers.

"Curse you, you treacherous tactician and your female," he hissed. "We'll cross paths again, and when we do, I won't be so forgiving."

Getting to his feet, Ardri dusted the sand off his coat. These robes didn't come cheap, and with the grains slipping between the threads, it would only become more uncomfortable to wear. He'd have to have someone clean it for him. Perhaps he could trick his sacrifices into doing it? After all, cleaning and cooking and breeding were all that they were good for. Yes, that was exactly what he was going to do, as soon as he found another group to bring under his heel, and another town to bring to its knees.

As he scanned his surroundings, the river lapping at the shore behind him, he saw a flicker of movement and a flash of gold. For a moment, he thought it might have been the dazzling gleam from the gold lining of the Grimleal robes, but it was just the long blonde hair of the female standing a few feet away, her yellow robes spread over the sand.

Wait. This female could be his first sacrifice!

His lips pulled back into a grin. Reaching into his robes, he pulled out a dagger. The sand didn't make a sound as he crept over it, inching closer and closer to his prey by the second. He raised his dagger in the air. His eyes locked onto a spot on her back, and in an instant, he knew his dagger would plunge straight through there.

With a victorious cry, he let his dagger fall. Any second, it would tear through flesh, and blood would splatter all over him, a kill well earned.

To his surprise, he cut through the air. He stumbled forward, and the sand slipped out from under his feet. His teeth crashed together as his chin hit the ground. He groaned, and through his daze, he managed to look up.

Two soft blue eyes stared back.

The female opened his mouth, maybe to cry for help. All that escaped was a whisper, unsteady and so quiet, even he couldn't hear it.

Whatever it was, he didn't care. A roar ripped itself from his throat, hoarse and cracked. He pushed himself off the floor. The female stepped back, and she let out an imitation of a scream. He lunged for her, his dagger outstretched.

He never saw the staff in her hands. Not before it crashed into the side of his skull, or after. His mind shut down, and he collapsed in an instant.

The woman stared down at the man, her eyes wide with horror. Her eyes wandered to her staff, blood splattered over the jewel at the end.

She... she couldn't have killed him. Could she?

Below her, she heard the man give a raspy breath, and she saw his chest shudder as it rose and fell. Relief washed over her, and she let her arms fall back to her sides.

She knew she was supposed to help people. It was a feeling she couldn't explain, the one thing that she could feel through the fog over her brain.

But this man... he'd attacked her. Surely she could make an exception with him. Right?

The woman looked to her left, then looked over to her right. When she didn't see anyone, she kicked sand over the man's body. As long as no one found out she left a man to the wilderness, it should be fine.

With one last look around her to make sure no one was around, the woman turned around and headed back to the village. She knew leaving this man alone was supposed to make her feel guilty. And yet she didn't feel what everyone else told her was "guilt".

Emmeryn would take this to her grave.

* * *

"Well done you two."

Robin couldn't help but smile. As he basked in the warm glow of the torches hung up on the wall around them, he felt a surge of pride, hearing the words from Chrom's own mouth. It was praise well earned, especially after all he'd been through in the past few days.

Sumia helped too, which was why he let her stand next to him.

"I wouldn't have believed such was happening right under our noses, if not for all this." Chrom shook his head and sighed. "Do you know how they could have possibly snuck into the city?"

"They disguised themselves as a group of traveling minstrels," Robin said.

"Minstrels? A group of minstrels that large surely would have fallen under suspicion."

"That is true. The only explanation I was able to come up with was that they could have trickled in gradually."

"You think of everything, don't you?"

"If I didn't, you lot would probably be dead."

"Enough of that," Chrom huffed. "The Plegia-Ylisse war was a year ago."

"But the remnants still linger. If I may make a suggestion, I'd advise tracking down and questioning all the minstrels in the city, if only to root out any Grimleal who might have escaped."

"I'll have to think about it," Chrom said, waving his hand.

"Wait." Both Robin and Chrom turned to Sumia, and she shrunk under their gazes. "The girls we rescued, are they okay?"

"They're safe," Chrom said. "Thanks to you, the Royal Guard was able to subdue the remaining Grimleal before anyone innocent got hurt."

Sumia sighed, and her shoulders relaxed. She must have been tense this whole time, Robin realized. The thought that she could have left those girls to die must have been quite a burden on her.

"Anyway, I think you two deserve a break." A smile spread over Chrom's lips, and he clapped both of them on the shoulder. "You've worked hard to solve this case for the past few days, so you must be desperate for a moment of respite. In any case, I'm glad I could have such capable people I can rely on to protect the kingdom."

"You... you think I'm capable?" Sumia asked, her eyes shining almost as bright as her cheeks.

"Of course." Chrom brought his hands back to his side, and he turned and walked away. "I'd expect as much from any of my Shepherds. Now go get some rest."

Anyone could see how much his words meant to Sumia, save for Chrom himself. Robin almost found it adorable, seeing how she stuttered and stood there looking star-struck. It didn't seem like she planned on moving any time soon, though, so he put it upon himself to hook his arm around hers and drag her away.

As soon as the doors slammed shut behind them, Sumia slumped back against the door and let out a long sigh. Robin didn't expect it, and he slipped on the rug. Sumia's sigh quickly turned into a shriek, and they both came tumbling down in a loud crash.

"Are you two okay?" From behind Chrom's door, Robin heard footsteps approaching.

Without really thinking, he and Sumia blurted out, "We're fine."

The footsteps ceased. "Alright." Robin heard Chrom walk away, only to stop a moment later. "You two better not be doing anything inappropriate out there. Lady Gin might not take too kindly to you making a mess on the carpet."

Robin made to protest, but Chrom quickly moved out of earshot, leaving him and Sumia alone in the hall. Robin let out a deep breath through his nose, and, with a grumble, turned to face Sumia.

His nose brushed against hers.

Her eyes widened almost as soon as his, their faces inches away from each other. She stuttered out an excuse. He shook his head, and he nodded to the side. She shut her mouth, but at the very least, she seemed to understand him.

A few flailing limbs and some awkward brushing later, they untangled themselves from each other's grasp. Robin got to his feet first. Sumia tried to follow, but the rug slipped out from beneath her, and she landed on the floor once again.

Robin chuckled. He offered her his hand, and as he helped her to her feet, she grinned gratefully. They both turned to look down the hall. As former Shepherds, their quarters were fairly close to each other.

Sumia exchanged one more look with him.

"Should we go get some rest?" Robin said. "It has been an eventful week, after all."

"Well, since Chrom told us to," Sumia said, "I guess it wouldn't hurt."

Together, they started down the hall. With no one else present, their footsteps echoed loudly through the cramped corridors, breaking through the soft crackling of the torches above. Hers rung at a much slower pace than his, hollow and metallic compared to his solid and leathery footsteps.

As they reached a corner, Robin caught a glimpse of an open window, and beyond that, the endless night sky. Stars glittered against the dark, fixed to their positions above the earth, and the moon watched over them, one giant light to dwarf them all. The moon watched over him and Sumia too, following them as they strode past another set of doors.

Robin glanced over his shoulder, just to see if she hadn't tripped and was still by his side. Sumia seemed to have the same idea, and their eyes met. Her gentle chocolate gaze glistened in the low light, and Robin found himself feeling a little awkward, staring in silence.

"So," he said, making an effort to fill the air between them. "It's finally over."

"It is," Sumia replied.

"These last two days have been quite eventful."

"You already said that."

Robin frowned. "Did I?"

"A minute ago. If you can't remember that, maybe you shouldn't be our tactician. We wouldn't want you to leave Chrom sitting in the middle of a battlefield because you forgot to tell him to retreat, would we?"

Robin let himself laugh. "Very funny." His laughter faded a bit, but his smile remained. "An entire year since the Plegia-Ylisse war. An entire year since anything's happened. Has it really been that long?"

"I wouldn't call that long."

"Well, I can barely remember anything before that, so it feels long to me."

"Oh. I forgot about that." This time, Sumia chuckled, though she sounded a little more unsure.

"Maybe I should put you in the back lines for the next battle. If you can't remember something like that, we wouldn't want you leaving your pegasus at camp, would we?"

"Oh, aren't you clever?"

"It is my duty." He sighed, and he ran a hand through his hair. "The next battle. I wonder if that will ever come."

"If we're lucky enough, it won't."

"Yes. But, at least for me, being lucky all the time can get boring."

Sumia kicked at the floor. "Well, the past two days have been exciting enough for me."

"I think it was a nice break from the mundane and boring work I've had to do, wouldn't you agree?"

"Maybe it was too much of a break. For someone who is supposed to pull us out of trouble, you've done nothing but get us into it."

Robin playfully jabbed at her shoulder. "I got us out of it, didn't I? Besides, what have you done?"

"I saved you."

"That you did."

They walked in silence for a bit more. It felt strange, letting the calm settle in the air around them, especially just when he was starting to get used to her voice.

"I bet you'd have quite the story to tell from this."

"Huh?"

"I mean, compared to the rest of the year, a lot happened during the past two days. It'd be hard for me to settle back into doing paperwork after this."

"Yeah. It's going to take some getting used to, falling back into a routine."

"Can't you at least say it was a little fun, breaking off to solve a mystery, like in those stories you like to read so much?"

Sumia's footsteps stopped. Robin walked for a bit more, before he turned around. He glanced over at her, but Sumia seemed to be focused on something distant.

"Sumia?" he asked, frowning.

"Yeah. I suppose it was kind of like something out of a book."

She shook her head, and she followed him. As soon as she fell in beside him, Robin continued as well. Another minute of silence came and went. They strolled down the hall for a bit longer, before Sumia stopped in front of a door.

"We're here."

"Are we?"

Confused, Sumia craned her neck up to the door. A sign hung over it, and on it, it read: "Cordelia".

"Oh! Silly me. My door is two doors to the right."

This time, it was Robin's turn to follow Sumia as she led him two doors back. She came to a stop in front of her door, and she turned to look at him.

She gave him a smile, one that seemed almost sad. "Well, I guess this is where we part ways. All stories have to end, after all." With that, she turned back to the door.

"Wait."

Sumia paused, her door handle already halfway down. She looked back, and he met her stare with a firm gaze of his own.

"These past few days... you wouldn't be against doing it again, would you?"

"What do you mean?" Sumia asked, tilting her head.

"Solving mysteries with me. I can promise it'd be a great deal more exciting than sitting around in the castle, waiting for the pegasus knights to be called to do something."

"I don't know," Sumia said, and her gaze fell to the floor.

"You could get Chrom to notice you more if you helped."

Her eyes snapped back onto him in an instant. "Well... maybe I can help. If I have the time, that is. But do you really need me?"

A grin split Robin's face. "Of course! After all, where would I be without my partner?"

"Splattered at the foot of a mountain."

Robin opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He put a hand to his chin and hummed. "I suppose you're right. But it'd feel strange, working with anyone else at this point."

"Really?" Sumia smiled, and she swung her hands. "That's so nice to hear."

"Yeah? Well, you've proved yourself useful. You shouldn't have a problem keeping up with me, wherever else we might go."

"And where would that be?"

Robin shrugged. "I don't know. We'll just have to ask Chrom about it."

"Can we do that tomorrow? Because I really am tired." As if to emphasize her point, Sumia yawned.

"We can do it tomorrow. You certainly look like you need to sleep."

"You need it too! Don't forget to take care of yourself!" Sumia said, and she put her hands to her hips. Her lip stuck out in a pout.

Robin couldn't say no to a face like that. "Alright. I'll get some sleep."

"But tomorrow?"

"I'll talk to Chrom."

"Okay."

Robin smiled. Sumia's cheeks glowed in the torchlight as she smiled back. The doorknob clicked as she turned it the rest of the way, and as she slipped through, she said, "Goodnight, Robin."

"Goodnight, Sumia."

As the door closed behind her, Robin stepped back. His eyes wandered down the hall, toward the direction of his room. He started down the hall, but not before he took one last look at Sumia's door.

_Sumia and Robin. Enforcers of Ylisstol's law. Who could've thought?_ he said to himself. _This could be the start of something great._

With that, he swept his coat over and strolled down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, three months after the release, I've finally finished. What started as a sort of intermission piece for me to write while on Christmas Break has sort of integrated itself into my schedule. I've always seen this as one of my shorter stories, so I didn't think it'd take long to finish, but then I stopped writing for this story, and now, here we are.
> 
> I fully expected to hate how this story ended. I went into it, fully intending on making a romance-centric story for once, then once that got derailed, I didn't think I'd be able to write an ending that I'd be able to live with, but I don't think it turned out all that bad. Yes, I know this open-ended ending was a bit of a cheap shot, but at the very least, it'd let me build onto what I've done here.
> 
> Speaking of which, let's talk sequels. While I did have a lot of fun writing this, probably the most fun I've ever had writing for a story, I was a bit let down with how little the characters were involved in romance. But, I do have a follow-up planned that will, hopefully, do this ship a bit more justice. It's probably not going to happen any time soon, since, as I said, I'll be putting up a story for Smash Bros on Saturdays, but I will return.
> 
> Until then, I wish you all well.


End file.
